Sex-biased gene regulation varies across human populations as a result of adaptive evolution.

Autor: Reynolds AZ; Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.; Department of Internal Medicine, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA., Niedbalski SD; Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.; Human Evolutionary Genetics Unit, Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Paris, France.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: American journal of biological anthropology [Am J Biol Anthropol] 2024 Apr; Vol. 183 (4), pp. e24888. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Dec 15.
DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.24888
Abstrakt: Objectives: Studies of human sexual dimorphism and gender disparities in health focus on ostensibly universal molecular sex differences, such as sex chromosomes and circulating hormone levels, while ignoring the extraordinary diversity in biology, behavior, and culture acquired by different human populations over their unique evolutionary histories.
Materials and Methods: Using RNA-Seq data and whole genome sequences from 1000G and HGDP, we investigate variation in sex-biased gene expression across 11 human populations and test whether population-level variation in sex-biased expression may have resulted from adaptive evolution in regions containing sex-specific regulatory variants.
Results: We find that sex-biased gene expression in humans is highly variable, mostly population-specific, and demonstrates between population reversals. Expression quantitative trait locus mapping reveals sex-specific regulatory regions with evidence of recent positive natural selection, suggesting that variation in sex-biased expression may have evolved as an adaptive response to ancestral environments experienced by human populations.
Discussion: These results indicate that sex-biased gene expression is more flexible than previously thought and is not generally shared among human populations. Instead, molecular phenotypes associated with sex depend on complex interactions between population-specific molecular evolution and physiological responses to contemporary socioecologies.
(© 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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