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Although gene expression divergence has long been postulated to be the primary driver of human evolution, identifying the genes and genetic variants underlying uniquely human traits has proven to be quite challenging. Theory suggests that cell-type-specific cis-regulatory variants may fuel evolutionary adaptation due to the specificity of their effects. These variants can precisely tune the expression of a single gene in a single cell-type, avoiding the potentially deleterious consequences of trans-acting changes and non-cell type-specific changes that can impact many genes and cell types, respectively. It has recently become possible to quantify human-specific cis-acting regulatory divergence by measuring allele-specific expression in human-chimpanzee hybrid cells-the product of fusing induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells of each species in vitro. However, these cis-regulatory changes have only been explored in a limited number of cell types. Here, we quantify human-chimpanzee cis-regulatory divergence in gene expression and chromatin accessibility across six cell types, enabling the identification of highly cell-type-specific cis-regulatory changes. We find that cell-type-specific genes and regulatory elements evolve faster than those shared across cell types, suggesting an important role for genes with cell-type-specific expression in human evolution. Furthermore, we identify several instances of lineage-specific natural selection that may have played key roles in specific cell types, such as coordinated changes in the cis-regulation of dozens of genes involved in neuronal firing in motor neurons. Finally, using novel metrics and a machine learning model, we identify genetic variants that likely alter chromatin accessibility and transcription factor binding, leading to neuron-specific changes in the expression of the neurodevelopmentally important genes FABP7 and GAD1. Overall, our results demonstrate that integrative analysis of cis-regulatory divergence in chromatin accessibility and gene expression across cell types is a promising approach to identify the specific genes and genetic variants that make us human.
Pubmed ID: 38358392
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Original SAMTOOLS package has been split into three separate repositories including Samtools, BCFtools and HTSlib. Samtools for manipulating next generation sequencing data used for reading, writing, editing, indexing,viewing nucleotide alignments in SAM,BAM,CRAM format. BCFtools used for reading, writing BCF2,VCF, gVCF files and calling, filtering, summarising SNP and short indel sequence variants. HTSlib used for reading, writing high throughput sequencing data.
View all literature mentionsSoftware performing alignment of high-throughput RNA-seq data. Aligns RNA-seq reads to reference genome using uncompressed suffix arrays.
View all literature mentionsTHIS RESOURCE IS NO LONGER IN SERVICE. Documented on February 28,2023. Software Python package that provides infrastructure to process data from high-throughput sequencing assays. While the main purpose of HTSeq is to allow you to write your own analysis scripts, customized to your needs, there are also a couple of stand-alone scripts for common tasks that can be used without any Python knowledge.
View all literature mentionsJava toolset for working with next generation sequencing data in the BAM format.
View all literature mentionsA powerful toolset for genome arithmetic allowing one to address common genomics tasks such as finding feature overlaps and computing coverage. Bedtools allows one to intersect, merge, count, complement, and shuffle genomic intervals from multiple files in widely-used genomic file formats such as BAM, BED, GFF/GTF, VCF. While each individual tool is designed to do a relatively simple task (e.g., intersect two interval files), quite sophisticated analyses can be conducted by combining multiple bedtools operations on the UNIX command line.
View all literature mentionsEncyclopedia of DNA elements consisting of list of functional elements in human genome, including elements that act at protein and RNA levels, and regulatory elements that control cells and circumstances in which gene is active. Enables scientific and medical communities to interpret role of human genome in biology and disease. Provides identification of common cell types to facilitate integrative analysis and new experimental technologies based on high-throughput sequencing. Genome Browser containing ENCODE and Epigenomics Roadmap data. Data are available for entire human genome.
View all literature mentionsA program to merge paired end Illumina reads that are overlapping into a single longer read.
View all literature mentionsSoftware package for differential gene expression analysis based on the negative binomial distribution. Used for analyzing RNA-seq data for differential analysis of count data, using shrinkage estimation for dispersions and fold changes to improve stability and interpretability of estimates.
View all literature mentionsAlignment analysis software tool for comparative mapping between two genome assemblies or between two different genomes. It can cache intermediate results to speed a comparisons of multiple sequences.
View all literature mentionsWeb tool for graphical illustrations for biological systems by BioRender. Used for articles and presentations. Collection of pre made icons and templates from life science fields for scientific illustrations. Customized icons possible on request.
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