Rare variation in noncoding regions with evolutionary signatures contributes to autism spectrum disorder risk
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens
PROVIDER: GSE243549 | GEO | 2024/05/13
REPOSITORIES: GEO
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Project description:Human Accelerated Regions (HARs) are the fastest-evolving regions of the human genome and many are hypothesized to function as regulatory elements that drive human-specific gene regulatory programs. We interrogate the in vitro enhancer activity of >3,100 HARs in massively parallel reporter assays (MPRAs), demonstrating that many HARs appear to act as neural enhancers and that sequence divergence at HARs has largely augmented their neuronal enhancer activity.
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Project description:Human accelerated regions (HARs) are evolutionarily conserved sequences that acquired human-specific nucleotide changes and reside in genomic regions associated with unique human traits and disease. The majority of HARs (96%) are noncoding, a few of which have been shown to be functional enhancers. Here, we comprehensively tested human and chimpanzee sequences of HARs (N=714) for enhancer activity using a lentivirus-based massively parallel reporter assay (lentiMPRA) in human and chimpanzee iPSC derived neural progenitors at two differentiation time points. We found that 43% (306/714) function as enhancers and over two-thirds (204/306) showed consistent differences in activity between human and chimpanzee sequences across conditions. We also tested all possible permutations of substitutions in seven HARs and found significant positive and negative interactions. Our study provides a comprehensive resource of functional neurodevelopmental HAR enhancers and shows that multiple interacting sites drive evolutionary activity differences.
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Project description:Human accelerated regions (HARs) are evolutionarily conserved sequences that acquired human-specific nucleotide changes and reside in genomic regions associated with unique human traits and disease. The majority of HARs (96%) are noncoding, a few of which have been shown to be functional enhancers. Here, we comprehensively tested human and chimpanzee sequences of HARs (N=714) for enhancer activity using a lentivirus-based massively parallel reporter assay (lentiMPRA) in human and chimpanzee iPSC derived neural progenitors at two differentiation time points. We found that 43% (306/714) function as enhancers and over two-thirds (204/306) showed consistent differences in activity between human and chimpanzee sequences across conditions. We also tested all possible permutations of substitutions in seven HARs and found significant positive and negative interactions. Our study provides a comprehensive resource of functional neurodevelopmental HAR enhancers and shows that multiple interacting sites drive evolutionary activity differences.
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Project description:Human Accelerated Regions (HARs) are conserved genomic loci that evolved at an accelerated rate in the human lineage and may underlie human-specific traits. We generated HARs and chimpanzee accelerated regions with an automated pipeline and an alignment of 251 mammalian genomes. Combining deep-learning with chromatin capture experiments in human and chimpanzee neural progenitor cells, we discovered a significant enrichment of HARs in topologically associating domains (TADs) containing human-specific genomic variants that change three-dimensional (3D) genome organization. Differential gene expression between humans and chimpanzees at these loci suggests rewiring of regulatory interactions between HARs and neurodevelopmental genes. Thus, comparative genomics together with models of 3D genome folding revealed enhancer hijacking as an explanation for the rapid evolution of HARs.
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Project description:Accurate control of tissue-specific gene expression plays a pivotal role in heart development. However, few cardiac transcriptional enhancers have thus far been identified. Extreme non-coding sequence conservation successfully predicts enhancers active in many tissues, but fails to identify substantial numbers of enhancers active in the heart. We used ChIP-seq with the enhancer-associated protein p300 from mouse embryonic heart tissue to identify over three thousand candidate heart enhancers genome-wide. In contrast to other studied tissues at this time-point, most candidate heart enhancers are not deeply conserved in vertebrate evolution. Nevertheless, the testing of 130 candidate regions in a transgenic mouse assay revealed that most of them reproducibly function as enhancers active in the heart, irrespective of their degree of evolutionary constraint. These results provide evidence for tissue-dependent differences in evolutionary constraint of enhancers acting through the transcriptional co-activator p300 at this time-point, and identify a large population of poorly conserved heart enhancers. Examination of p300 binding in embryonic stage 11.5 mouse heart and midbrain
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Project description:Human Accelerated Regions (HARs) are highly conserved across species but exhibit a significant excess of human-specific sequence changes, suggesting they may have gained novel functions in human evolution. HARs include gene regulatory elements with human-specific activity and have been implicated in the evolution of the human brain. However, our understanding of how HARs contributed to uniquely human features of the brain is hindered by a lack of insight into the genes and pathways that HARs regulate. It is unknown whether HARs acted by altering the expression of gene targets conserved between HARs and their chimpanzee orthologs or by gaining new gene targets in human, a mechanism termed enhancer hijacking. We generated a high-resolution map of chromatin interactions for 1,590 HARs and their orthologs in human and chimpanzee neural stem cells (NSCs) to comprehensively identify gene targets in both species. HARs and their chimpanzee orthologs targeted a conserved set of 2,963 genes enriched for neurodevelopmental processes including neurogenesis and synaptic transmission. Changes in HAR enhancer activity were correlated with changes in conserved gene target expression. Conserved targets were enriched among genes differentially expressed between human and chimpanzee NSCs or between human and non-human primate developing and adult brain. Species-specific HAR gene targets did not converge on known biological functions and were not significantly enriched among differentially expressed genes, suggesting that most HARs did not alter gene expression via enhancer hijacking. HAR gene targets, including differentially expressed targets, also showed cell type-specific expression patterns in the developing human brain, notably in outer radial glia, which are hypothesized to contribute to human cortical expansion. Our findings support that HARs influenced human brain evolution by altering the expression of a conserved set of gene targets and provide the means to functionally link HARs with novel human brain features.
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Project description:The evolution of the human cerebral cortex involved modifications in the composition and proliferative potential of the neural stem cell (NSC) niche during brain development. Genetic changes that altered the activity of transcriptional enhancers have been linked to phenotypic differences between humans and other primates. Human Accelerated Regions (HARs) consist of >1600 highly constrained noncoding regions of the genome that show significant evolutionary acceleration on the human lineage, suggesting they encode human-specific functions. Multiple studies support that HARs include neurodevelopmental enhancers with novel activities in humans, but the regulatory roles of HARs in NSC biology has not been empirically assessed at scale. Here we conducted a direct-capture Perturb-seq screen repressing 180 neurodevelopmentally active HARs in human iPSC-derived NSCs with single-cell transcriptional readout. After profiling over 188,000 NSCs, we identified a set of HAR perturbations with convergent transcriptional effects on gene networks related to the specification of basal radial glia (bRG), a progenitor population that is expanded in humans. Processes associated with these networks included the regulation of apicobasal polarity and migration. We found convergent dysregulation of specific apicobasal polarity and adherens junction regulators, including PARD3, ABI2, SETD2, and PCM1, which are critical to apical-basal RG fate decisions. Autism- and intellectual-disability-associated genes were also enriched among genes showing changes in expression due to HAR perturbations. Our findings reveal interconnected roles for HARs in NSC biology and cortical development and link specific HARs to processes implicated in human cortical expansion.
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2016-12-12 | PXD005253 | Pride