Universidad de Cantabria, Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation, Medical Research Council (UK), Dementia Research Institute (UK), Alzheimer Society, Alzheimer's Research UK, Wellcome Trust, Dolby Family Fund, National Institute for Health Research (UK), NIHR Biomedical Research Centre (UK), Agencia Estatal de Investigación (España), Fundación Séneca, Gobierno de la Región de Murcia
المصدر:
Nature communications, vol 12, iss 1 Nature Communications 12, 2076 (2021) Nature Communications, Vol 12, Iss 1, Pp 1-13 (2021) Nature communications Nature Communications Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC instname UCrea Repositorio Abierto de la Universidad de Cantabria Universidad de Cantabria (UC)
Knowledge of genomic features specific to the human lineage may provide insights into brain-related diseases. We leverage high-depth whole genome sequencing data to generate a combined annotation identifying regions simultaneously depleted for genetic variation (constrained regions) and poorly conserved across primates. We propose that these constrained, non-conserved regions (CNCRs) have been subject to human-specific purifying selection and are enriched for brain-specific elements. We find that CNCRs are depleted from protein-coding genes but enriched within lncRNAs. We demonstrate that per-SNP heritability of a range of brain-relevant phenotypes are enriched within CNCRs. We find that genes implicated in neurological diseases have high CNCR density, including APOE, highlighting an unannotated intron-3 retention event. Using human brain RNA-sequencing data, we show the intron-3-retaining transcript to be more abundant in Alzheimer’s disease with more severe tau and amyloid pathological burden. Thus, we demonstrate potential association of human-lineage-specific sequences in brain development and neurological disease. Knowledge of genomic features specific to humans may be important for understanding disease. Here the authors demonstrate a potential role for these human-lineage-specific sequences in brain development and neurological disease.
