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Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons02:54

Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons

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Genome comparison is one of the excellent ways to interpret the evolutionary relationships between organisms. The basic principle of genome comparison is that if two species share a common feature, it is likely encoded by the DNA sequence conserved between both species. The advent of genome sequencing technologies in the late 20th century enabled scientists to understand the concept of conservation of domains between species and helped them to deduce evolutionary relationships across diverse...
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Gene Evolution - Fast or Slow?02:05

Gene Evolution - Fast or Slow?

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The genomes of eukaryotes are punctuated by long stretches of sequence which do not code for proteins or RNAs. Although some of these regions do contain crucial regulatory sequences, the vast majority of this DNA serves no known function. Typically, these regions of the genome are the ones in which the fastest change, in evolutionary terms, is observed, because there is typically little to no selection pressure acting on these regions to preserve their sequences.
In contrast, regions which code...
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Genomics02:02

Genomics

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Genomics is the science of genomes: it is the study of all the genetic material of an organism. In humans, the genome consists of information carried in 23 pairs of chromosomes in the nucleus, as well as mitochondrial DNA. In genomics, both coding and non-coding DNA is sequenced and analyzed. Genomics allows a better understanding of all living things, their evolution, and their diversity. It has a myriad of uses: for example, to build phylogenetic trees, to improve productivity and...
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Next-generation Sequencing03:00

Next-generation Sequencing

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The first human genome sequencing project cost $2.7 billion and was declared complete in 2003, after 15 years of international cooperation and collaboration between several research teams and funding agencies. Today, with the advent of next-generation sequencing technologies, the cost and time of sequencing a human genome have dropped over 100 fold.
Next-Generation Sequencing Methods
Although all next-generation methods use different technologies, they all share a set of standard features....
89.8K
Synteny and Evolution02:31

Synteny and Evolution

3.3K
John H. Renwick first coined the term “synteny” in 1971, which refers to the genes present on the same chromosomes, even if they are not genetically linked. The species with common ancestry tend to show conserved syntenic regions. Therefore, the concept of synteny is nowadays used to describe the evolutionary relationship between species.
Around 80 million years ago, the human and mice lineages diverged from the common ancestor. During the course of evolution, the ancestral...
3.3K
Multi-species Conserved Sequences02:51

Multi-species Conserved Sequences

4.0K
Next-generation sequencing technologies have created large genomic databases of a variety of animals and plants. Ever since the human genome project was completed, scientists studied the genome of primates, mammals, and other phylogenetically distant living beings. Such large-scale  studies have provided new insights into the evolutionary relationship between organisms.
Although the genome of each species varies greatly from each other, a few sequences are highly conserved. Such conserved...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 15, 2025

Neuronal Nuclei Isolation from Human Postmortem Brain Tissue
10:58

Neuronal Nuclei Isolation from Human Postmortem Brain Tissue

Published on: October 1, 2008

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Decoding DNA sequence-driven evolution of the human brain epigenome at cellular resolution.

Emre Caglayan1,2, Genevieve Konopka1,2

  • 1Department of Neuroscience, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75390, USA.

Biorxiv : the Preprint Server for Biology
|September 25, 2023
PubMed
Summary

This study reveals evolutionary changes in the human brain epigenome using single-cell ATAC-seq. Fetal microglia show divergence, while conserved elements link to brain diseases.

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Last Updated: Jul 15, 2025

Neuronal Nuclei Isolation from Human Postmortem Brain Tissue
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Isolation and Cultivation of Neural Progenitors Followed by Chromatin-Immunoprecipitation of Histone 3 Lysine 79 Dimethylation Mark
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Area of Science:

  • Genomics
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Comparative genomics offers insights into functional genetic changes.
  • Tissue accessibility can limit evolutionary studies of the brain.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To uncover lineage-specific DNA substitutions in the human and ancestral ape brain epigenome.
  • To identify evolutionary patterns in gene regulation and cell identity.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized adult and fetal cortex single-cell ATAC-seq datasets.
  • Employed multiomic data to link regulatory elements to genes and pathways.
  • Analyzed transcription factor binding site evolution across lineages.

Main Results:

  • Fetal microglia exhibit evolutionary divergence across lineages; other cell types are conserved.
  • Identified genes linked to lineage-divergent regulatory elements and implicated biological pathways.
  • Observed lineage-specific transcription factor binding site evolution, including bHLH-PAS and MEF2 factors.
  • Conserved genomic features are enriched in brain disease variants.

Conclusions:

  • The human brain epigenome displays significant evolutionary patterns at cellular resolution.
  • Lineage divergence in fetal microglia and specific transcription factor expansions highlight unique evolutionary trajectories.
  • Conserved regulatory elements, rather than human-lineage-specific ones, are associated with brain disease risk.