Back

FOS binding sites are a hub for the evolution of activity-dependent gene regulatory programs in human neurons

Carter, A. C.; Koreman, G. T.; Petrocelli, J. E.; Robb, J. E.; Bushinsky, E. M.; Trowbridge, S. K.; Kingsley, D. M.; Walsh, C. A.; Song, J. H. T.; Greenberg, M. E.

2025-04-01 evolutionary biology
10.1101/2025.03.31.646366 bioRxiv
Show abstract

After birth, sensory inputs to neurons trigger the induction of activity-dependent genes (ADGs) that mediate many aspects of neuronal maturation and plasticity. To identify human-specific ADGs, we characterized these genes in human-chimpanzee tetraploid neurons. We identified 235 ADGs that are differentially expressed between human and chimpanzee neurons and found that their nearby regulatory sites are species-biased in their binding of the transcription factor FOS. An assessment of these sites revealed that many are enriched for single nucleotide variants that promote or eliminate FOS binding in human neurons. Disrupting the function of individual species-biased FOS-bound enhancers diminishes expression of nearby genes and affects the firing dynamics of human neurons. Our findings indicate that FOS-bound enhancers are frequent sites of evolution and that they regulate human-specific ADGs that may contribute to the unusually protracted and complex process of postnatal human brain development.

Matching journals

The top 3 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.