ArticleBMC evolutionary biology2008
The role of positive selection in determining the molecular cause of species differences in disease.
Article in BMC evolutionary biology, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 49 papers.
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49 citing papers in PubMed, 95 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Identification of multiple TAR DNA binding protein retropseudogene lineages during the evolution of primates.Scientific reports · 2022Article
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- Systems identification and characterization of β-glucuronosyltransferase genes involved in arabinogalactan-protein biosynthesis in plant genomes.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Cestode strobilation: prediction of developmental genes and pathways.BMC genomics · 2020Article
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- Antagonistic Pleiotropy in Human Disease.Journal of molecular evolution · 2020Review
- Positive Selection of Squalene Synthase in Cucurbitaceae Plants.International journal of genomics · 2019Article
- Evolution of Brain Active Gene Promoters in Human Lineage Towards the Increased Plasticity of Gene Regulation.Molecular neurobiology · 2018Article
- Adaptive molecular evolution ofEcology and evolution · 2017Article
- Positive selection and functional divergence of farnesyl pyrophosphate synthase genes in plants.BMC molecular biology · 2017Article
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Authors and funding
13 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundRelated species, such as humans and chimpanzees, often experience the same disease with varying degrees of pathology, as seen in the cases of Alzheimer's disease, or differing symptomatology as in AIDS. Furthermore, certain diseases such as schizophrenia, epithelial cancers and autoimmune disorders are far more frequent in humans than in other species for reasons not associated with lifestyle. Genes that have undergone positive selection during species evolution are indicative of functional adaptations that drive species differences. Thus we investigate whether biomedical disease differences between species can be attributed to positively selected genes.
resultsWe identified genes that putatively underwent positive selection during the evolution of humans and four mammals which are often used to model human diseases (mouse, rat, chimpanzee and dog). We show that genes predicted to have been subject to positive selection pressure during human evolution are implicated in diseases such as epithelial cancers, schizophrenia, autoimmune diseases and Alzheimer's disease, all of which differ in prevalence and symptomatology between humans and their mammalian relatives. In agreement with previous studies, the chimpanzee lineage was found to have more genes under positive selection than any of the other lineages. In addition, we found new evidence to support the hypothesis that genes that have undergone positive selection tend to interact with each other. This is the first such evidence to be detected widely among mammalian genes and may be important in identifying molecular pathways causative of species differences.
conclusionOur dataset of genes predicted to have been subject to positive selection in five species serves as an informative resource that can be consulted prior to selecting appropriate animal models during drug target validation. We conclude that studying the evolution of functional and biomedical disease differences between species is an important way to gain insight into their molecular causes and may provide a method to predict when animal models do not mirror human biology.
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