Editor's Summary
9 March 2006
Express yourself
Much has been written about the similarity between the human genome and those of the great apes. But as well as gene sequence, the manifestation of a genome in flesh and blood depends on gene expression patterns. Now using a multispecies cDNA array to compare human gene expression patterns to those in chimpanzees, orangutans and rhesus macaques, it is possible to identify individual genes subject to fast and slow expression-rate evolution. Some genes have been expressed at constant levels across the 70 million years of evolution encompassed by these species: these include genes associated with liver carcinoma, suggesting that other disease candidate genes might be found amongst genes with conserved expression. In contrast to these stable genes, positive selection in the human lineage occurs disproportionately on the very class of genes thought to be most likely to lead to divergence at the organismal level, the genes for transcription factors.
News and Views: Comparative genomics: Difference of expression
Evolutionary studies tend to focus on alterations in proteins. But evolutionary change can often occur through modified gene expression, a process that is now under investigation with species-specific microarrays.
Rasmus Nielsen
doi:10.1038/440161a
Letter: Expression profiling in primates reveals a rapid evolution of human transcription factors
Yoav Gilad, Alicia Oshlack, Gordon K. Smyth, Terence P. Speed and Kevin P. White
doi:10.1038/nature04559
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