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Heterospecific SNP diversity in humans and rhesus macaque ( M acaca mulatta )
Author(s) -
Ng Jillian,
Trask Jessica Satkoski,
Smith David Glenn,
Kanthaswamy Sree
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of medical primatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.31
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1600-0684
pISSN - 0047-2565
DOI - 10.1111/jmp.12174
Subject(s) - rhesus macaque , biology , macaque , genetics , diversity (politics) , snp , evolutionary biology , single nucleotide polymorphism , gene , ecology , genotype , sociology , anthropology
Background Conservation of single nucleotide polymorphisms ( SNP s) between human and other primates (i.e., heterospecific SNP s) in candidate genes can be used to assess the utility of those organisms as models for human biomedical research. Methods A total of 59,691 heterospecific SNP s in 22 rhesus macaques and 20 humans were analyzed for human trait associations and 4207 heterospecific SNP s biallelic in both taxa were compared for genetic variation. Results Variation comparisons at the 4207 SNP s showed that humans were more genetically diverse than rhesus macaques with observed and expected heterozygosities of 0.337 and 0.323 vs. 0.119 and 0.102, and minor allele frequencies of 0.239 and 0.063, respectively. In total, 431 of the 59,691 heterospecific SNP s are reportedly associated with human‐specific traits. Conclusion While comparisons between human and rhesus macaque genomes are plausible, functional studies of heterospecific SNP s are necessary to determine whether rhesus macaque alleles are associated with the same phenotypes as their corresponding human alleles.