Improved Macaca fascicularis gene annotation reveals evolution of gene expression profiles in multiple tissues

Macaca fascicularis (M. fascicularis) is a primate model organism that played important role in studying human health. It is vital to better understand the similarity and differences of gene regulation between M. fascicularis and human. Current comparative study of gene regulation between the two species are limited by low quality of gene annotation and lack of regulatory element data on M. fascicularis genome.

In this study, we improved the M. fascicularis gene annotation with 57 gene expression data from multiple tissues and, more importantly, a manual curation procedure. The new annotation enabled us to map gene expression and identify gene location more accurately.

Comparing with human gene expression data from the same cell types, we characterized the evolution of expression patterns of homologous genes.