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    Evolutionary Divergence of Gene and Protein Expression in the Brains of Humans and Chimpanzees.

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    Date
    2015-07-10
    Authors
    Babbitt, Courtney C
    Bauernfeind, AL
    Ely, JJ
    Hof, PR
    Moseley, Martin Arthur III
    Sherwood, CC
    Soderblom, Erik James
    Turner, ME
    Wray, Gregory Allan
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    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 article
    Subject
    RNA-Seq
    chimpanzee
    human brain evolution
    proteome
    transcriptome
    Adult
    Animals
    Brain
    Caudate Nucleus
    Evolution, Molecular
    Gyrus Cinguli
    Humans
    Middle Aged
    Pan troglodytes
    Proteins
    Proteome
    Transcriptome
    Permalink
    https://hdl.handle.net/10161/13708
    Published Version (Please cite this version)
    10.1093/gbe/evv132
    Publication Info
    Babbitt, Courtney C; Bauernfeind, AL; Ely, JJ; Hof, PR; Moseley, Martin Arthur III; Sherwood, CC; ... Wray, Gregory Allan (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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    Scholars@Duke

    Moseley

    Martin Arthur Moseley III

    Associate Professor in Medicine

    Erik James Soderblom

    Assistant Research Professor of Cell Biology
    Wray

    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
    Alphabetical list of authors with Scholars@Duke profiles.
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