Dataset Information

Sex Biased Gene Expression Profiling of Human Brains at Major Developmental Stages.

ABSTRACT: There are many differences in brain structure and function between males and females. However, how these differences were manifested during development and maintained through adulthood are still unclear. Here we present a time series analyses of genome-wide transcription profiles of the human brain, and we identified genes showing sex biased expression at major developmental stages (prenatal time, early childhood, puberty time and adulthood). We observed a great number of genes (>2,000 genes) showing between-sex expression divergence at all developmental stages with the greatest number (4,164 genes) at puberty time. However, there are little overlap of sex-biased genes among the major developmental stages, an indication of dynamic expression regulation of the sex-biased genes in the brain during development. Notably, the male biased genes are highly enriched for genes involved in neurological and psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer's disease and autism, while no such pattern was seen for the female-biased genes, suggesting that the differences in brain disorder susceptibility between males and females are likely rooted from the sex-biased gene expression regulation during brain development. Collectively, these analyses reveal an important role of sex biased genes in brain development and neurodevelopmental disorders.

SUBMITTER: Shi L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4754746 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Sex Biased Gene Expression Profiling of Human Brains at Major Developmental Stages.

Shi Lei L Zhang Zhe Z Su Bing B

Scientific reports 20160216

There are many differences in brain structure and function between males and females. However, how these differences were manifested during development and maintained through adulthood are still unclear. Here we present a time series analyses of genome-wide transcription profiles of the human brain, and we identified genes showing sex biased expression at major developmental stages (prenatal time, early childhood, puberty time and adulthood). We observed a great number of genes (>2,000 genes) sh ...[more]

PMID: 26880485

Similar Datasets

Project description:BACKGROUND:Sexual reproduction is a core biological function that is conserved throughout eukaryotic evolution, yet breeding systems are extremely variable. Genome-wide comparative studies can be effectively used to identify genes and regulatory patterns that are constrained to preserve core functions from those that may help to account for the diversity of animal reproductive strategies. We use a custom microarray to investigate gene expression in males and two reproductive stages of females in the crustacean Daphnia pulex. Most Daphnia species reproduce by cyclical parthenogenesis, alternating between sexual and clonal reproduction. Both sex determination and the switch in their mode of reproduction is environmentally induced, making Daphnia an interesting comparative system for the study of sex-biased and reproductive genes. RESULTS:Patterns of gene expression in females and males reveal that 50% of assayed transcripts show some degree of sex-bias. Female-biased transcription is enriched for translation, metabolic and regulatory genes associated with development. Male-biased expression is enriched for cuticle and protease function. Comparison with well studied arthropods such as Drosophila melanogaster and Anopheles gambiae suggests that female-biased patterns tend to be conserved, whereas male-biased genes are evolving faster in D. pulex. These findings are based on the proportion of female-biased, male-biased, and unbiased genes that share sequence similarity with proteins in other animal genomes. CONCLUSION:Some transcriptional differences between males and females appear to be conserved across Arthropoda, including the rapid evolution of male-biased genes which is observed in insects and now in a crustacean. Yet, novel patterns of male-biased gene expression are also uncovered. This study is an important first step towards a detailed understanding of the genetic basis and evolution of parthenogenesis, environmental sex determination, and adaptation to aquatic environments.

Project description:BACKGROUND:Expression patterns between males and females vary in every adult tissue, even in organs with no conspicuous dimorphisms such as the heart. While studies of male and female differences have traditionally focused on the influence of sex hormones, these do not account for all the differences at the molecular and epigenetic levels. We previously reported that a substantial number of genes were differentially expressed in male and female mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells and revealed dose-dependent enhancer activity in response to Prdm14, a key pluripotency factor expressed more highly in female ES cells. In this work, we investigated the role of Prdm14 in establishing sex-specific gene expression networks. We surveyed the sex-specific landscape in early embryogenesis with special reference to cardiac development. We generated sex-specific co-expression networks from mouse ES cells, examined the presence of sex-specific chromatin domains, and analyzed previously published datasets from different developmental time points to characterize how sex-biased gene expression waxes and wanes to evaluate whether sex-biased networks are detectable throughout heart development. RESULTS:We performed ChIP-seq on male and female mouse ES cells to determine differences in chromatin status. Our study reveals sex-biased histone modifications, underscoring the potential for the sex chromosome complement to prime the genome differently in early development with consequences for later expression biases. Upon differentiation of ES cells to cardiac precursors, we found sex-biased expression of key transcription and epigenetic factors, some of which persisted from the undifferentiated state. Using network analyses, we also found that Prdm14 plays a prominent role in regulating a subset of dimorphic expression patterns. To determine whether sex-biased expression is present throughout cardiogenesis, we re-analyzed data from two published studies that sampled the transcriptomes of mouse hearts from 8.5 days post-coitum embryos to neonates and adults. We found sex-biased expression at every stage in heart development, and interestingly, identified a subset of genes that exhibit the same bias across multiple cardiogenic stages. CONCLUSIONS:Overall, our results support the existence of sexually dimorphic gene expression profiles and regulatory networks at every stage of cardiac development, some of which may be established in early embryogenesis and epigenetically perpetuated.

Dataset Information

Sex Biased Gene Expression Profiling of Human Brains at Major Developmental Stages.

Publications

Sex Biased Gene Expression Profiling of Human Brains at Major Developmental Stages.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets