Regional Patterns of Gene Expression in Human and Chimpanzee Brains

  1. Philipp Khaitovich1,7,
  2. Bjoern Muetzel1,
  3. Xinwei She2,
  4. Michael Lachmann1,
  5. Ines Hellmann1,
  6. Janko Dietzsch3,
  7. Stephan Steigele3,
  8. Hong-Hai Do4,
  9. Gunter Weiss1,5,
  10. Wolfgang Enard1,
  11. Florian Heissig1,
  12. Thomas Arendt6,
  13. Kay Nieselt-Struwe3,
  14. Evan E. Eichler2, and
  15. Svante Pääbo1
  1. 1 Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
  2. 2 Department of Genetics, Center for Computational Genomics, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and University Hospitals of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio 44106, USA
  3. 3 Center for Bioinformatics Tübingen, University of Tübingen, Sand 14, D-72076 Tuebingen, Germany
  4. 4 Interdisciplinary Center for Bioinformatics, University of Leipzig, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
  5. 5 WE Informatik, University of Düsseldorf, Universitätsstrasse 1, D-40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
  6. 6 Paul Flechsig Institute for Brain Research, University of Leipzig, Jahnallee 59, D-04109 Leipzig, Germany

Abstract

We have analyzed gene expression in various brain regions of humans and chimpanzees. Within both human and chimpanzee individuals, the transcriptomes of the cerebral cortex are very similar to each other and differ more between individuals than among regions within an individual. In contrast, the transcriptomes of the cerebral cortex, the caudate nucleus, and the cerebellum differ substantially from each other. Between humans and chimpanzees, 10% of genes differ in their expression in at least one region of the brain. The majority of these expression differences are shared among all brain regions. Whereas genes encoding proteins involved in signal transduction and cell differentiation differ significantly between brain regions within individuals, no such pattern is seen between the species. However, a subset of genes that show expression differences between humans and chimpanzees are distributed nonrandomly across the genome. Furthermore, genes that show an elevated expression level in humans are statistically significantly enriched in regions that are recently duplicated in humans.

Footnotes

  • [Supplemental material is available online at www.genome.org.]

  • Article and publication date are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.2538704.

  • 7 Corresponding author. E-MAIL khaitovich{at}eva.mpg.de; FAX 49-341-3550-555.

    • Accepted June 8, 2004.
    • Received March 3, 2004.
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