Evolutionary and Biomedical Implications of Sex Differences in the Primate Brain Transcriptome

Overview

Journal Cell Genom

Date 2024 Jun 28

PMID 38942023

Authors

Alex R DeCasien

Kenneth L Chiou

Camille Testard

Arianne Mercer

Josue E Negron-Del Valle

Samuel E Bauman Surratt

Olga Gonzalez

Michala K Stock

Angelina V Ruiz-Lambides

Melween I Martinez

Susan C Anton

Christopher S Walker

Jerome Sallet

Melissa A Wilson

Lauren J N Brent

Michael J Montague

Chet C Sherwood

Michael L Platt

James P Higham

Noah Snyder-Mackler

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Humans exhibit sex differences in the prevalence of many neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. Here, we generated one of the largest multi-brain-region bulk transcriptional datasets for the rhesus macaque and characterized sex-biased gene expression patterns to investigate the translatability of this species for sex-biased neurological conditions. We identify patterns similar to those in humans, which are associated with overlapping regulatory mechanisms, biological processes, and genes implicated in sex-biased human disorders, including autism. We also show that sex-biased genes exhibit greater genetic variance for expression and more tissue-specific expression patterns, which may facilitate rapid evolution of sex-biased genes. Our findings provide insights into the biological mechanisms underlying sex-biased disease and support the rhesus macaque model for the translational study of these conditions.

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Multiregion transcriptomic profiling of the primate brain reveals signatures of aging and the social environment.

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