Quantification of gene expression from primate tissue samples

We have quantified gene expression in five tissues (brain, heart, kidney, liver and testis) from humans, chimpanzees and rhesus macaques using the Illumina NlaIII Digital Gene Expression (DGE) protocol. This dataset extends a previous microarray study by Khaitovich et al. (Khaitovich et al. 2005) with the rhesus macaque outgroup and complements other previously generated tissue transcriptome profiles from primates (Enard et al. 2002; Khaitovich et al. 2006; Somel et al. 2009; Babbitt et al. 2010; Blekhman et al. 2010; Wetterbom et al. 2010). contributor: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany Overall design: Samples were obtained from brain (pre-frontal cortex), heart, kidney, liver, and testis tissues of male humans, chimpanzees and rhesus macaques. Illumina NlaIII DGE libraries for all samples were generated in tissue batches, randomizing species in library preparation and sequencing. Human samples originate from different, probably unrelated, individuals for each tissue. For chimpanzees and rhesus macaques the libraries for all tissues come from the same set of individuals and among these are individuals related at the half- and full-sibling level. Due to limited access to samples, the analysis could not be limited to individuals of similar age. Human individuals vary between 5 and 88 years of age, chimpanzees between 6 years and 35 years of age and rhesus macaques between 3 and 9 years of age.