长期以来，“what makes us human”这个问题一直困惑着人类学研究人员。19世纪，有学者提出人类比黑猩猩发育更为迟缓而导致比其他灵长类保持年轻形态的假设。随着“幼态持续假设”论断的进一步演绎，人类学家、考古学家和心理学家开始研究人类和灵长类动物不同的发育速度。然而，无论对人或者黑猩猩，学界尚不清楚其出生后大脑在分子水平上的发育机制。
中国科学院上海生命科学研究院计算生物学研究所青年科学家小组组长Philipp Khaitovich研究员和博士后Mehmet Somel等人通过考量人、黑猩猩和恒河猴三者大脑在不同年龄段的基因表达量，发现从整个基因转录组层面上来看，人、黑猩猩和恒河猴三者大脑的发育速度并不一致，相较黑猩猩和恒河猴而言，一些特定基因在人类身上表现出“加速进化”。因此，人类发育迟缓有显著的基因表达的特征模式。同时，这些幼态持续基因并不完全随机，而与大脑灰质有关。研究结果显示，这些幼态持续基因很可能对人类幼儿的大脑发育起重要作用，从分子水平上看这些基因与人类智力的开发密切相关。
国际著名杂志美国《国家科学院院刊》（PNAS）于4月7日报道了上述研究工作。该项研究工作得到了中国科技部、中国科学院、德国马普学会和中国科学院上海生命科学研究院计算生物学所计算生物学重点实验室的大力支持。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
PNAS，doi: 10.1073/pnas.0900544106，Mehmet Somel，Philipp Khaitovich
Transcriptional neoteny in the human brain
Mehmet Somela,b,1, Henriette Franzb,c, Zheng Yana, Anna Lorencb, Song Guoa, Thomas Gigerb, Janet Kelsob, Birgit Nickelb, Michael Dannemannb, Sabine Bahnd, Maree J. Webstere, Cynthia S. Weickertf, Michael Lachmannb,2, Svante P??bob,2 and Philipp Khaitovicha,b,1,2
aPartner Institute for Computational Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 320 Yue Yang Road, Shanghai 200031, China;
bMax Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany;
cMax Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Am Fassberg 11, D-37077 G?ttingen, Germany;
dInstitute of Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1TN, United Kingdom;
eStanley Medical Research Institute, 9800 Medical Center Drive, Rockville, MD 20850; and
fMacquarie Group Foundation Chair of Schizophrenia Research, Schizophrenia Research Institute, Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
Abstract
In development, timing is of the utmost importance, and the timing of developmental processes often changes as organisms evolve. In human evolution, developmental retardation, or neoteny, has been proposed as a possible mechanism that contributed to the rise of many human-specific features, including an increase in brain size and the emergence of human-specific cognitive traits. We analyzed mRNA expression in the prefrontal cortex of humans, chimpanzees, and rhesus macaques to determine whether human-specific neotenic changes are present at the gene expression level. We show that the brain transcriptome is dramatically remodeled during postnatal development and that developmental changes in the human brain are indeed delayed relative to other primates. This delay is not uniform across the human transcriptome but affects a specific subset of genes that play a potential role in neural development.
