Gibbons Become Last Ape To Have Their Genomes Sequenced

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
New research appearing in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature details the successful sequencing and annotation of the gibbon genome, meaning that scientists have now mapped the DNA of all of the world’s ape species.
The study authors, which included scientists from Oregon Health & Science University and the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine, explained that the small arboreal apes, which are native to the tropical forests of Southeastern Asia, demonstrate an accelerated rate of chromosomal rearrangement and occupy a key node in the primate phylogeny between Old World monkeys and great apes.
In their paper, they detail the genetic sequence of a northern white-cheeked gibbon (Nomascus leucogenys), including the characterization of a gibbon-specific mobile genetic element known as LAVA. LAVA, which is comprised of known jumping genes and named after its main components (L1, Alu, and the VA section of SVA mobile elements), is only the second type of composite mobile element to ever be discovered in primates.
“Everything we learn about the genome sequence of this particular primate and others analyzed in the recent past helps us to understand human biology in a more detailed and complete way,” lead author Dr. Jeffrey Rogers, associate professor in the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor, said in a statement.
“The gibbon sequence represents a branch of the primate evolutionary tree that spans the gap between the Old World Monkeys and great apes and has not yet been studied in this way. The new genome sequence provides important insight into their unique and rapid chromosomal rearrangements,” Dr. Rogers explained.
For years, experts have known that chromosomes evolve quickly and have many breaks and rearrangements, but there had previously been no way to explain the phenomenon. The genome sequencing helps to explain the molecular mechanism that is unique to the gibbon that leads to these large-scale rearrangements, he added.
“We now have whole genome sequences for all the great apes and, with this work, also the small apes,” Dr. Rogers told Reuters reporter Will Dunham on Wednesday. The work also “provides new information and insight into the history of the human genome, in evolutionary terms,” since the gibbon is a close cousin of people genetically, he added.
In the course of their sequencing efforts, the researchers were able to locate the genes responsible for the ability of these critically-endangered apes to swing from one tree to another at speeds of up to 35 mph, Dunham said. They also located an unusual number of structural changes to their DNA – changes that can be problematic for some types of creatures, including causing cancer in humans, but appear to have no adverse effect on the gibbons.
With the publication of this study, the gibbon becomes the last ape on Earth to have its genome sequenced. The chimpanzee genome was published in 2005, Dunham said, followed by the orangutan in 2011 and both the gorilla and the bonobo the following year. The researchers explained that previous work has concluded the gibbon genome is an estimated 96 percent match to people, compared to 98 percent for chimpanzees.
“We do this work to learn as much as we can about gibbons, which are some of the rarest species on the planet, but we also do this work to better understand our own evolution and get some clues on the origin of human diseases,” Dr. Lucia Carbone, assistant professor of behavioral neuroscience in the OHSU School of Medicine and an assistant scientist in the Division of Neuroscience at OHSU’s Oregon National Primate Research Center, said in a statement.
“This is the last ape to be sequenced and the end of an era in human comparative genomics,” added co-author Tomas Marques-Bonet, an evolutionary geneticist at Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (CSIC/UPF) and the National Center of Genomic Analysis (CNAG) in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. “Now we have tools – the genomes – for all the closest species to humans.”
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