Journal Update - BMC Evolutionary Biology: How unique is human chromosome 19?

Human chromosome 19, demonstrates a uniquely high level of gene density and diversity. To understand the uniqueness of these trait in humans, the authors compared the GC context and present of CpG islands on chromosome 19, with orthologous areas on 19 other primates species. They find that the striking similarities in all 19 primates species, suggesting that high gene diversity and density in these chromosome has been constant throughout primate evolution. They demonstrate a higher rate of nucleotide evolution in regulatory regions of these genes, which they suggest could be synonymous with other studies that find accelerated rates of evolution in genes coding for pregnancy and immune response.

Jack Richardson - Journal Update - BMC Evolutionary Biology.

Link to article: https://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-020-1595-9