Differences in Ape and Human Regulatory Regions

Table 1. Maps of primary transcription in CD4+T cells (Danko et al., 2018)

A recent Nature: ecology & evolution paper titled "Dynamic evolution of regulatory element ensembles in primate CD4+ T cells" discusses how our genes may be regulated differently from our closest living relatives. To understand the differences in the regulatory processes between apes and humans, researchers at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory studied how enhancer regions affect RNA transcription in CD4+T immune system cells. Enhancer regions are parts of DNA with protein activators that are more likely to be transcribed. Danko et al. looked at blood samples of 5 different vertebrate species: humans, chimpanzees, rhesus macaques, mice, and rats. They found that nucleotide substitutions at the locus, SGPP2, were correlated with transcription specifically in human genomes.

Click here for the 2018 article.

Angie