Comparison of chromatin accessibility between human and non-human primates

Evolution of transcriptional regulation is thought to be a major cause of the evolution of phenotypic traits. We compared DNase I Hypersensitive sites in fibroblast cells from five primates (human, chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, and macaque). We identified approximately 90,000 DHS sites, of which 59% are not significantly different between species, 27% are differential and likely due to a single evolutionary change, and 14% are differential and likely due to multiple changes. We found that including additional closely related species allows us to better distinguish between accessibility changes that are specific to a single species and those that have experienced changes in chromatin accessibility across multiple species during evolution. Overall design: DNase-seq of 3 biological replicates from each of 5 species: human, chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, and macaque. Grant ID: HOMINID 0827552 Funding source: NSF Grant title: Genetic Bases for the Evolution of Human Diet Grantee name: Gregory Wray