Fast-evolving noncoding sequences in the human genome.docVIP

Open Access Re rch 2007BirdetVoal.lumesea8, Issue 6, Article R118 Fast-evolving noncoding sequences in the human genome Christine P Bird*, Barbara E Stranger*, Maureen Liu*, Daryl J Thomas?, Catherine E Ingle*, Claude Beazley*, Webb Miller?, Matthew E Hurles* and Emmanouil T Dermitzakis* Addresses: *The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, CB10 1SA, UK. ?Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. ?Department of Computer Science Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA. Correspondence: Emmanouil T Dermitzakis. Email: md4@sanger.ac.uk Published: 19 June 2007 Received: 19 December 2006 Revised: 14 March 2007 Accepted: 19 June 2007 Genome Biology 2007, 8:R118 (doi:10.1186/gb-2007-8-6-r118) The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2007/8/6/R118 ? 2007 Bird et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Fast-evolvingtiovpen.Oprv/eepsrsu1,r3e0s0;non-codingtchoensesearrveedensequencesnon-codingriched in resequencescent segmewerental didentifieduplicationthats, suappearggestintog havea receundergonent change idramaticn selectivhuman-specifice constraint follochangeswi duinplselec-ica- Abstract Background: Gene regulation is considered one of the driving forces of evolution. Although protein-coding DNA sequences and RNA genes have been subject to recent evolutionary events in the human lineage, it has been hypothesized that the large phenotypic divergence between humans and chimpanzees has been driven mainly by changes in gene regulation rather than altered protein-coding gene sequences. Comparative analysis