Evolutionary Divergence of Gene and Protein Expression in the Brains of Humans and Chimpanzees.
Abstract
Although transcriptomic profiling has become the standard approach for exploring molecular
differences in the primate brain, very little is known about how the expression levels
of gene transcripts relate to downstream protein abundance. Moreover, it is unknown
whether the relationship changes depending on the brain region or species under investigation.
We performed high-throughput transcriptomic (RNA-Seq) and proteomic (liquid chromatography
coupled with tandem mass spectrometry) analyses on two regions of the human and chimpanzee
brain: The anterior cingulate cortex and caudate nucleus. In both brain regions, we
found a lower correlation between mRNA and protein expression levels in humans and
chimpanzees than has been reported for other tissues and cell types, suggesting that
the brain may engage extensive tissue-specific regulation affecting protein abundance.
In both species, only a few categories of biological function exhibited strong correlations
between mRNA and protein expression levels. These categories included oxidative metabolism
and protein synthesis and modification, indicating that the expression levels of mRNA
transcripts supporting these biological functions are more predictive of protein expression
compared with other functional categories. More generally, however, the two measures
of molecular expression provided strikingly divergent perspectives into differential
expression between human and chimpanzee brains: mRNA comparisons revealed significant
differences in neuronal communication, ion transport, and regulatory processes, whereas
protein comparisons indicated differences in perception and cognition, metabolic processes,
and organization of the cytoskeleton. Our results highlight the importance of examining
protein expression in evolutionary analyses and call for a more thorough understanding
of tissue-specific protein expression levels.
Type
Journal articleSubject
RNA-Seqchimpanzee
human brain evolution
proteome
transcriptome
Adult
Animals
Brain
Caudate Nucleus
Evolution, Molecular
Gyrus Cinguli
Humans
Middle Aged
Pan troglodytes
Proteins
Proteome
Transcriptome
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/13708Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1093/gbe/evv132Publication Info
Bauernfeind, Amy L; Soderblom, Erik J; Turner, Meredith E; Moseley, M Arthur; Ely,
John J; Hof, Patrick R; ... Babbitt, Courtney C (2015). Evolutionary Divergence of Gene and Protein Expression in the Brains of Humans and
Chimpanzees. Genome Biol Evol, 7(8). pp. 2276-2288. 10.1093/gbe/evv132. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/13708.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Martin Arthur Moseley III
Adjunct Professor in the Department of Cell Biology
Erik James Soderblom
Associate Research Professor of Cell Biology
Director, Proteomics and Metabolomics Core Facility
Gregory Allan Wray
Professor of Biology
I study the evolution of genes and genomes with the broad aim of understanding the
origins of biological diversity. My approach focuses on changes in the expression
of genes using both empirical and computational approaches and spans scales of biological
organization from single nucleotides through gene networks to entire genomes. At
the finer end of this spectrum of scale, I am focusing on understanding the functional
consequences and fitness components of specific genetic variants within reg
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