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.介导人类特异性脑表型（包括新皮质扩张与复杂认知能力）的分子机制，目前尚未得到充分阐明。尽管学界普遍认为基因表达改变在形态进化中发挥关键作用，但目前已被鉴定出在人类新皮质中存在表达偏移的基因仍寥寥无几。本研究旨在通过贝叶斯方法重构人类祖先以及人类与黑猩猩共同祖先的脑转录组（transcriptome），以此鉴定人类演化支系中存在表达偏移的基因与生物学通路。