The evolution of lineage-specific clusters of single nucleotide substitutions in the human genome

Genomic regions harboring large numbers of human-specific single nucleotide substitutions are of significant interest since they are potential genomic foci underlying the evolution of human-specific traits as well as human adaptive evolution. Previous studies aimed to identify such regions either used pre-defined genomic locations such as coding sequences and conserved genomic elements or employed sliding window methods. Such approaches may miss clusters of substitutions occurring in regions other than those pre-defined locations, or not be able to distinguish human-specific clusters of substitutions from regions of generally high substitution rates. Here, we conduct a 'maximal segment' analysis to scan the whole human genome to identify clusters of human-specific substitutions that occurred since the divergence of the human and the chimpanzee genomes. This method can identify species-specific clusters of substitutions while not relying on pre-defined regions. We thus identify thousands of clusters of human-specific single nucleotide substitutions. The evolution of such clusters is driven by a combination of several different evolutionary processes including increased regional mutation rate, recombination-associated processes, and positive selection. These newly identified regions of human-specific substitution clusters include large numbers of previously identified human accelerated regions, and exhibit significant enrichments of genes involved in several developmental processes. Our study provides a useful tool to study the evolution of the human genome.