Trabzuni, D;
Ramasamy, A;
Imran, S;
Walker, R;
Smith, C;
Weale, ME;
Hardy, J;
... North American Brain Expression Consortium; + view all
(2013)
Widespread sex differences in gene expression and splicing in the adult human brain.
Nat Commun
, 4
, Article 2771. 10.1038/ncomms3771.
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Abstract
There is strong evidence to show that men and women differ in terms of neurodevelopment, neurochemistry and susceptibility to neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disease. The molecular basis of these differences remains unclear. Progress in this field has been hampered by the lack of genome-wide information on sex differences in gene expression and in particular splicing in the human brain. Here we address this issue by using post-mortem adult human brain and spinal cord samples originating from 137 neuropathologically confirmed control individuals to study whole-genome gene expression and splicing in 12 CNS regions. We show that sex differences in gene expression and splicing are widespread in adult human brain, being detectable in all major brain regions and involving 2.5% of all expressed genes. We give examples of genes where sex-biased expression is both disease-relevant and likely to have functional consequences, and provide evidence suggesting that sex biases in expression may reflect sex-biased gene regulatory structures.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Widespread sex differences in gene expression and splicing in the adult human brain. |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/ncomms3771 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms3771 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2013 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Neurodegenerative Diseases UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Genetics and Genomic Medicine Dept |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1422350 |
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