Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 106, Issue 14, Pages 5743-5748Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0900544106
Keywords
human evolution; brain development; gene expression; heterochrony; chimpanzee
Categories
Funding
- People's Republic of China [2007CB947004]
- Chinese Academy of Sciences [KSCX2-YW-R-09]
- Max Planck Society
- Bundesministerum fur Bildung und Forschung [PPO-S25T11]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
In development, timing is of the utmost importance, and the timing of developmental processes often changes as organisms evolve. In human evolution, developmental retardation, or neoteny, has been proposed as a possible mechanism that contributed to the rise of many human-specific features, including an increase in brain size and the emergence of human-specific cognitive traits. We analyzed mRNA expression in the prefrontal cortex of humans, chimpanzees, and rhesus macaques to determine whether human-specific neotenic changes are present at the gene expression level. We show that the brain transcriptome is dramatically remodeled during postnatal development and that developmental changes in the human brain are indeed delayed relative to other primates. This delay is not uniform across the human transcriptome but affects a specific subset of genes that play a potential role in neural development.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available