ArticleEpigenetics2014
Widespread differences in cortex DNA methylation of the "language gene" CNTNAP2 between humans and chimpanzees.
Article in Epigenetics, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- A LINE-1 insertion upstream of FOXP2 promotes neuronal differentiation during primate evolution.Genome biology · 2026Article
- Insights From Language-Trained Apes: Brain Network Plasticity and Communication.Evolutionary anthropology · 2025Review
- LinkedbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- UBE3A: The Role in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) and a Potential Candidate for Biomarker Studies and Designing Therapeutic Strategies.Diseases (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Ribosomal DNA Copy Number Variation is Coupled with DNA Methylation Changes at the 45S rDNA Locus.Epigenetics · 2023Article
- Evidence for parent-of-origin effects in autism spectrum disorder: a narrative review.Journal of applied genetics · 2023Review
- Biolinguistics: A Scientometric Analysis of Research on (Children's) Molecular Genetics of Speech and Language (Disorders).Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Comparative analysis reveals distinctive epigenetic features of the human cerebellum.PLoS genetics · 2021Article
- Evolution of regulatory signatures in primate cortical neurons at cell-type resolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Cell Type and Species-specific Patterns in Neuronal and Non-neuronal Methylomes of Human and Chimpanzee Cortices.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2018Article
- Review
- The placental gateway of maternal transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.Journal of genetics · 2017Review
- The Age of the Father.Molecular syndromology · 2017Article
- The interplay between DNA methylation and sequence divergence in recent human evolution.Nucleic acids research · 2015Article
- Connecting the CNTNAP2 Networks with Neurodevelopmental Disorders.Molecular syndromology · 2015Review
- Epigenetics and nutritional environmental signals.Integrative and comparative biology · 2014Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
CNTNAP2, one of the largest genes in the human genome, has been linked to human-specific language abilities and neurodevelopmental disorders. Our hypothesis is that epigenetic rather than genetic changes have accelerated the evolution of the human brain. To compare the cortex DNA methylation patterns of human and chimpanzee CNTNAP2 at ultra-high resolution, we combined methylated DNA immunoprecipitation (MeDIP) with NimbleGen tiling arrays for the orthologous gene and flanking sequences. Approximately 1.59 Mb of the 2.51 Mb target region could be aligned and analyzed with a customized algorithm in both species. More than one fifth (0.34 Mb) of the analyzed sequence throughout the entire gene displayed significant methylation differences between six human and five chimpanzee cortices. One of the most striking interspecies differences with 28% methylation in human and 59% in chimpanzee cortex (by bisulfite pyrosequencing) lies in a region 300 bp upstream of human SNP rs7794745 which has been associated with autism and parent-of-origin effects. Quantitative real-time RT PCR revealed that the protein-coding splice variant CNTNAP2-201 is 1.6-fold upregulated in human cortex, compared with the chimpanzee. Transcripts CNTNAP2-001, -002, and -003 did not show skewed allelic expression, which argues against CNTNAP2 imprinting, at least in adult human brain. Collectively, our results suggest widespread cortex DNA methylation changes in CNTNAP2 since the human-chimpanzee split, supporting a role for CNTNAP2 fine-regulation in human-specific language and communication traits.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.