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Evolutionary genomics

De novo gene increases brain size

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 7, pages 180–181 (2023)Cite this article

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Comparative analysis of human and macaque brain transcripts together with experiments in mice and in a cortical organoid model show the de novo emergence of a hominoid-specific protein-coding gene implicated in brain development. The evolution of RNA nuclear export signals enabled a new protein to become translated from an ancestral long-noncoding RNA locus.

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Fig. 1: Model for de novo gene birth at the ENSG00000205704 loci.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computational and Systems Biology, Pittsburgh Center for Evolutionary Biology and Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical School, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    April Rich & Anne-Ruxandra Carvunis

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  1. April Rich
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  2. Anne-Ruxandra Carvunis
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Correspondence to Anne-Ruxandra Carvunis.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Rich, A., Carvunis, AR. De novo gene increases brain size. Nat Ecol Evol 7, 180–181 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01942-5

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