Article detail · 2012
Extension of cortical synaptic development distinguishes humans from chimpanzees and macaques
- Year
- 2012
- Type
- preprint
Data source split
- YÖKSİS YÖKSİS article record
- YÖKSİS venue Genome Research
- Catalog match (ISSN) Genome Research
- OpenAlex OpenAlex enrichment (abstract, citations, topics)
Abstract
OpenAlex · English
Over the course of ontogenesis, the human brain and human cognitive abilities develop in parallel, resulting in a phenotype strikingly distinct from that of other primates. Here, we used microarrays and RNA-sequencing to examine human-specific gene expression changes taking place during postnatal brain development in the prefrontal cortex and cerebellum of humans, chimpanzees, and rhesus macaques. We show that the most prominent human-specific expression change affects genes associated with synaptic functions and represents an extreme shift in the timing of synaptic development in the prefrontal cortex, but not the cerebellum. Consequently, peak expression of synaptic genes in the prefrontal cortex is shifted from <1 yr in chimpanzees and macaques to 5 yr in humans. This result was supported by protein expression profiles of synaptic density markers and by direct observation of synaptic density by electron microscopy. Mechanistically, the human-specific change in timing of synaptic development involves the MEF2A-mediated activity-dependent regulatory pathway. Evolutionarily, this change may have taken place after the split of the human and the Neanderthal lineages.
Topics
Citations
OpenAlex cited_by_count. Not a WoS or Scopus citation count; those sources have no separate column here.
266 citations
OpenAlex cited_by_count (cache / database)
7 publications in the local catalog that cite this work (OpenAlex reference match; not the full global list).
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- Gene expression reversal toward pre-adult levels in the aging human brain and age-related loss of cellular identity 2017
- Transcriptomic insights into human brain evolution acceleration neutrality heterochrony 2014