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Divergence in alternative polyadenylation contributes to gene regulatory differences between humans and chimpanzees.

ABSTRACT: While comparative functional genomic studies have shown that inter-species differences in gene expression can be explained by corresponding inter-species differences in genetic and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms, co-transcriptional mechanisms, such as alternative polyadenylation (APA), have received little attention. We characterized APA in lymphoblastoid cell lines from six humans and six chimpanzees by identifying and estimating the usage for 44,432 polyadenylation sites (PAS) in 9518 genes. Although APA is largely conserved, 1705 genes showed significantly different PAS usage (FDR 0.05) between species. Genes with divergent APA also tend to be differentially expressed, are enriched among genes showing differences in protein translation, and can explain a subset of observed inter-species protein expression differences that do not differ at the transcript level. Finally, we found that genes with a dominant PAS, which is used more often than other PAS, are particularly enriched for differentially expressed genes.

SUBMITTER: Mittleman BE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7954529 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Divergence in alternative polyadenylation between humans and chimpanzees contributes to gene regulatory differences between species

Project description:Differences in gene regulation contribute to phenotypic differences between humans and other primates. While co-transcriptional gene regulatory mechanisms such as alternative polyadenylation (APA) can help explain how variation in gene regulation manifests, such mechanisms remain understudied. We measured polyadenylation site (PAS) usage in a panel of 6 human and 6 chimpanzee lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs). While APA is largely conserved between humans and chimpanzees, genes with divergent APA patterns are enriched among differentially expressed and differentially translated genes. Differential usage of 3’ UTR and intronic PAS are both significantly correlated with differential mRNA expression effect sizes but in opposite directions. For many genes, there is one PAS dominant, meaning it is used much more often than others. The dominant PAS for these gene is overwhelmingly shared between species, however, differences in dominant PAS are enriched for genes with expression differences. Finally, through post-translational mechanisms, we believe APA contributes to genes differentially expressed at the protein level but not in mRNA. As this is the first primate comparative study of APA, our study establishes APA as a key mechanism underlying the genetic regulation of gene and protein expression levels in primates.

2021-01-22 | GSE155245 | GEO

Divergence in alternative polyadenylation between humans and chimpanzees contributes to gene regulatory differences between species

Project description:Divergence in alternative polyadenylation between humans and chimpanzees contributes to gene regulatory differences between species

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Patterns and rates of intron divergence between humans and chimpanzees.

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Global analysis of regulatory divergence in the evolution of mouse alternative polyadenylation.

Project description:Alternative polyadenylation (APA), which is regulated by both cis-elements and trans-factors, plays an important role in post-transcriptional regulation of eukaryotic gene expression. However, comparing to the extensively studied transcription and alternative splicing, the extent of APA divergence during evolution and the relative cis- and trans-contribution remain largely unexplored. To directly address these questions for the first time in mammals, by using deep sequencing-based methods, we measured APA divergence between C57BL/6J and SPRET/EiJ mouse strains as well as allele-specific APA pattern in their F1 hybrids. Among the 24,721 polyadenylation sites (pAs) from 7,271 genes expressing multiple pAs, we identified 3,747 pAs showing significant divergence between the two strains. After integrating the allele-specific data from F1 hybrids, we demonstrated that these events could be predominately attributed to cis-regulatory effects. Further systematic sequence analysis of the regions in proximity to cis-divergent pAs revealed that the local RNA secondary structure and a poly(U) tract in the upstream region could negatively modulate the pAs usage.

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Identification of DNA methylation differences correlated with transcriptional divergence between humans and chimpanzees in chromosomes 21 and 22

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Widespread differences in cortex DNA methylation of the "language gene" CNTNAP2 between humans and chimpanzees.

Project description:CNTNAP2, one of the largest genes in the human genome, has been linked to human-specific language abilities and neurodevelopmental disorders. Our hypothesis is that epigenetic rather than genetic changes have accelerated the evolution of the human brain. To compare the cortex DNA methylation patterns of human and chimpanzee CNTNAP2 at ultra-high resolution, we combined methylated DNA immunoprecipitation (MeDIP) with NimbleGen tiling arrays for the orthologous gene and flanking sequences. Approximately 1.59 Mb of the 2.51 Mb target region could be aligned and analyzed with a customized algorithm in both species. More than one fifth (0.34 Mb) of the analyzed sequence throughout the entire gene displayed significant methylation differences between six human and five chimpanzee cortices. One of the most striking interspecies differences with 28% methylation in human and 59% in chimpanzee cortex (by bisulfite pyrosequencing) lies in a region 300 bp upstream of human SNP rs7794745 which has been associated with autism and parent-of-origin effects. Quantitative real-time RT PCR revealed that the protein-coding splice variant CNTNAP2-201 is 1.6-fold upregulated in human cortex, compared with the chimpanzee. Transcripts CNTNAP2-001, -002, and -003 did not show skewed allelic expression, which argues against CNTNAP2 imprinting, at least in adult human brain. Collectively, our results suggest widespread cortex DNA methylation changes in CNTNAP2 since the human-chimpanzee split, supporting a role for CNTNAP2 fine-regulation in human-specific language and communication traits.

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Conservation and divergence of the p53 gene regulatory network between mice and humans.

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Evolutionary Divergence of Gene and Protein Expression in the Brains of Humans and Chimpanzees.

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