Divergence in alternative polyadenylation contributes to gene regulatory differences between humans and chimpanzees

While comparative functional genomic studies have shown that inter-species differences in gene expression can be explained by corresponding inter-species differences in genetic and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms, co-transcriptional mechanisms, such as alternative polyadenylation (APA), have received little attention. We characterized APA in lymphoblastoid cell lines from six humans and six chimpanzees by identifying and estimating the usage for 44,432 polyadenylation sites (PAS) in 9518 genes. Although APA is largely conserved, 1705 genes showed significantly different PAS usage (FDR 0.05) between species. Genes with divergent APA also tend to be differentially expressed, are enriched among genes showing differences in protein translation, and can explain a subset of observed inter-species protein expression differences that do not differ at the transcript level. Finally, we found that genes with a dominant PAS, which is used more often than other PAS, are particularly enriched for differentially expressed genes.