ArticlePLoS biology2007
Rate of evolution in brain-expressed genes in humans and other primates.
Article in PLoS biology, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 61 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
61 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 114 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Functional Optimization in Distinct Tissues and Conditions Constrains the Rate of Protein Evolution.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
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- The Emerging Roles of Long Non-Coding RNAs in Intellectual Disability and Related Neurodevelopmental Disorders.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- Coexpression network architecture reveals the brain-wide and multiregional basis of disease susceptibility.Nature neuroscience · 2021Article
- Systematic detection of brain protein-coding genes under positive selection during primate evolution and their roles in cognition.Genome research · 2021Article
- Distribution, expression and methylation analysis of positively selected genes provides insights into the evolution in Brassica rapa.PloS one · 2021Article
- The origin and underlying driving forces of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.Journal of biomedical science · 2020Article
- Significant Evolutionary Constraints on Neuron Cells Revealed by Single-Cell Transcriptomics.Genome biology and evolution · 2020Article
- Genome-wide analysis reveals molecular convergence underlying domestication in 7 bird and mammals.BMC genomics · 2020Article
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- Human Accelerated Regions and Other Human-Specific Sequence Variations in the Context of Evolution and Their Relevance for Brain Development.Genome biology and evolution · 2018Review
- Review
- Evolution of complexity in the zebrafish synapse proteome.Nature communications · 2017Article
1 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 8 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Brain-expressed genes are known to evolve slowly in mammals. Nevertheless, since brains of higher primates have evolved rapidly, one might expect acceleration in DNA sequence evolution in their brain-expressed genes. In this study, we carried out full-length cDNA sequencing on the brain transcriptome of an Old World monkey (OWM) and then conducted three-way comparisons among (i) mouse, OWM, and human, and (ii) OWM, chimpanzee, and human. Although brain-expressed genes indeed appear to evolve more rapidly in species with more advanced brains (apes > OWM > mouse), a similar lineage effect is observable for most other genes. The broad inclusion of genes in the reference set to represent the genomic average is therefore critical to this type of analysis. Calibrated against the genomic average, the rate of evolution among brain-expressed genes is probably lower (or at most equal) in humans than in chimpanzee and OWM. Interestingly, the trend of slow evolution in coding sequence is no less pronounced among brain-specific genes, vis-à-vis brain-expressed genes in general. The human brain may thus differ from those of our close relatives in two opposite directions: (i) faster evolution in gene expression, and (ii) a likely slowdown in the evolution of protein sequences. Possible explanations and hypotheses are discussed.
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