Single-cell-resolution transcriptome map of human, chimpanzee, bonobo, and macaque brains

• Published in: Genome research Vol. 30; no. 5; pp. 776 - 789
• Main Authors: Khrameeva, Ekaterina, Kurochkin, Ilia, Han, Dingding, Guijarro, Patricia, Kanton, Sabina, Santel, Malgorzata, Qian, Zhengzong, Rong, Shen, Mazin, Pavel, Sabirov, Marat, Bulat, Matvei, Efimova, Olga, Tkachev, Anna, Guo, Song, Sherwood, Chet C, Camp, J Gray, Pääbo, Svante, Treutlein, Barbara, Khaitovich, Philipp
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 01.05.2020
• Subjects: Astrocytes; Cerebellum; Cerebral cortex; Evolution; Gene expression; Glial stem cells; Hypothalamus; Molecular modelling; Resource; Ribonucleic acid; RNA; Substantia alba
• ISSN: 1088-9051; 1549-5469
• DOI: 10.1101/gr.256958.119

Identification of gene expression traits unique to the human brain sheds light on the molecular mechanisms underlying human evolution. Here, we searched for uniquely human gene expression traits by analyzing 422 brain samples from humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and macaques representing 33 anatomical regions, as well as 88,047 cell nuclei composing three of these regions. Among 33 regions, cerebral cortex areas, hypothalamus, and cerebellar gray and white matter evolved rapidly in humans. At the cellular level, astrocytes and oligodendrocyte progenitors displayed more differences in the human evolutionary lineage than the neurons. Comparison of the bulk tissue and single-nuclei sequencing revealed that conventional RNA sequencing did not detect up to two-thirds of cell-type-specific evolutionary differences.