Detection of Lineage-Specific Evolutionary Changes among Primate Species

Background: Comparison of the human genome with other primates offers the opportunity to detect evolutionary events that created the diverse phenotypes among the primate species. Because the primate genomes are highly similar to one another, methods developed for analysis of more divergent species do not always detect signs of evolutionary selection. Results: We have developed a new method, called DivE, specifically designed to find regions that have evolved either more or less rapidly than expected, for any clade within a set of very closely related species. Unlike some previous methods, DivE does not rely on rates of synonymous and nonsynonymous substitution, which enables it to detect evolutionary events in noncoding regions. We demonstrate using simulated data that DivE compares favorably to alternative methods, and we then apply DivE to the ENCODE regions in 14 primate species. We identify thousands of regions in these primates, ranging from 50 to >10000 bp in length, that app...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Mihaela Pertea, Geo Pertea, Steven L. Salzberg
• Keywords: Biometrics, BMCBI 2011, Divergent Species, Human Genome, Primate Species