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Studying human and nonhuman primate evolutionary biology with powerful in vitro and in vivo functional genomics tools
Author(s) -
Grogan Kathleen E.,
Perry George H.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
evolutionary anthropology: issues, news, and reviews
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.401
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1520-6505
pISSN - 1060-1538
DOI - 10.1002/evan.21825
Subject(s) - biology , genomics , computational biology , functional genomics , proteomics , organism , crispr , evolutionary biology , induced pluripotent stem cell , epigenomics , nonhuman primate , data science , genetics , genome , computer science , embryonic stem cell , gene , gene expression , dna methylation
In recent years, tools for functional genomic studies have become increasingly feasible for use by evolutionary anthropologists. In this review, we provide brief overviews of several exciting in vitro techniques that can be paired with “‐omics” approaches (e.g., genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) for potentially powerful evolutionary insights. These in vitro techniques include ancestral protein resurrection, cell line experiments using primary, immortalized, and induced pluripotent stem cells, and CRISPR‐Cas9 genetic manipulation. We also discuss how several of these methods can be used in vivo, for transgenic organism studies of human and nonhuman primate evolution. Throughout this review, we highlight example studies in which these approaches have already been used to inform our understanding of the evolutionary biology of modern and archaic humans and other primates while simultaneously identifying future opportunities for anthropologists to use this toolkit to help answer additional outstanding questions in evolutionary anthropology.