Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 3, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2146
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Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [31171232, 30871342, 31171215]
- Ministry of Science and Technology, P.R. China [S2012GR0095]
- CAS Key Directional Program [KSCX2-EW-R-02-02, KSCX2-EW-J-15]
- Medical Research Council [MC_U127597124, MC_PC_U127597124] Funding Source: researchfish
- MRC [MC_PC_U127597124, MC_U127597124] Funding Source: UKRI
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MicroRNA-mediated gene regulation is important in many physiological processes. Here we explore the roles of a microRNA, miR-941, in human evolution. We find that miR-941 emerged de novo in the human lineage, between six and one million years ago, from an evolutionarily volatile tandem repeat sequence. Its copy-number remains polymorphic in humans and shows a trend for decreasing copy-number with migration out of Africa. Emergence of miR-941 was accompanied by accelerated loss of miR-941-binding sites, presumably to escape regulation. We further show that miR-941 is highly expressed in pluripotent cells, repressed upon differentiation and preferentially targets genes in hedgehog- and insulin-signalling pathways, thus suggesting roles in cellular differentiation. Human-specific effects of miR-941 regulation are detectable in the brain and affect genes involved in neurotransmitter signalling. Taken together, these results implicate miR-941 in human evolution, and provide an example of rapid regulatory evolution in the human linage.
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