Human evolution: the non-coding revolution

Abstract What made us human? Gene expression changes clearly played a significant part in human evolution, but pinpointing the causal regulatory mutations is hard. Comparative genomics enabled the identification of human accelerated regions (HARs) and other human-specific genome sequences. The major...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lucía F. Franchini, Katherine S. Pollard
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: BMC 2017-10-01
Series:BMC Biology
Online Access:http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12915-017-0428-9
Description
Summary:Abstract What made us human? Gene expression changes clearly played a significant part in human evolution, but pinpointing the causal regulatory mutations is hard. Comparative genomics enabled the identification of human accelerated regions (HARs) and other human-specific genome sequences. The major challenge in the past decade has been to link diverged sequences to uniquely human biology. This review discusses approaches to this problem, progress made at the molecular level, and prospects for moving towards genetic causes for uniquely human biology.
ISSN:1741-7007