Nature Communications (Mar 2020)

Differential DNA methylation of vocal and facial anatomy genes in modern humans

  • David Gokhman,
  • Malka Nissim-Rafinia,
  • Lily Agranat-Tamir,
  • Genevieve Housman,
  • Raquel García-Pérez,
  • Esther Lizano,
  • Olivia Cheronet,
  • Swapan Mallick,
  • Maria A. Nieves-Colón,
  • Heng Li,
  • Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg,
  • Mario Novak,
  • Hongcang Gu,
  • Jason M. Osinski,
  • Manuel Ferrando-Bernal,
  • Pere Gelabert,
  • Iddi Lipende,
  • Deus Mjungu,
  • Ivanela Kondova,
  • Ronald Bontrop,
  • Ottmar Kullmer,
  • Gerhard Weber,
  • Tal Shahar,
  • Mona Dvir-Ginzberg,
  • Marina Faerman,
  • Ellen E. Quillen,
  • Alexander Meissner,
  • Yonatan Lahav,
  • Leonid Kandel,
  • Meir Liebergall,
  • María E. Prada,
  • Julio M. Vidal,
  • Richard M. Gronostajski,
  • Anne C. Stone,
  • Benjamin Yakir,
  • Carles Lalueza-Fox,
  • Ron Pinhasi,
  • David Reich,
  • Tomas Marques-Bonet,
  • Eran Meshorer,
  • Liran Carmel

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15020-6
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 21

Abstract

Read online

How traits specific to modern humans have evolved is difficult to study. Here, Gokhman et al. compare measured and reconstructed DNA methylation maps of present-day humans, archaic humans and chimpanzees and find that genes that affect vocal tract and facial anatomy show methylation changes between archaic and modern humans.