Menschen teilen über 95 % unseres Genoms mit Schimpansen. Allerdings wiesen menschliche Zellen im Vergleich zu Schimpansen mehr hochregulierte Gene auf. Unterschiede in der Genexpression, nicht nur deren Vorhandensein, scheinen die bemerkenswerte Spezialisierung im menschlichen Gehirn voranzutreiben.

I’ve linked to the press release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2411918121

From the linked article:

Differences in gene expression, not just their presence, seems to drive the remarkable specialization found in the human brain.

Our brain is arguably the organ that most distinguishes humans from other primates. Its exceptional size, complexity and capabilities far exceed those of any other species on Earth. Yet humans share upwards of 95% of our genome with chimpanzees, our closest living relatives.

The authors recorded differences in the expression of about 5-10% of the 25,000 genes in the study. In general, human cells had more upregulated genes compared to chimpanzees. This is a much larger percentage than researchers found when they couldn’t break down the analysis by cell type. And the percentage grew to 12-15% when the authors began to consider cell subtypes.

Evolution is about more than merely changing genes. “Differential gene expression is really how human brains evolved,” Yi said.