Reconstruction of Ancestral Primate Neocortical Transcriptomes

The molecular mechanisms that underlie human-specific brain phenotypes, including neocortical expansion and complex cognitive abilities, are poorly understood. Although changes in gene expression are thought to play a large role in morphological evolution, few genes have been identified with expression shifts in the human neocortex. I aim to identify genes and biological pathways with expression shifts in the human lineage by reconstructing ancestral human and ancestral human/chimpanzee brain transcriptomes using Bayesian methods.