Microcephalin, a Gene Regulating Brain Size, Continues to Evolve Adaptively in Humans

By P. Evans, S. L. Gilbert, N. Mekel-Bobrov, E. Vallender, Jeffrey R. Anderson, Leila M. Vaez-Azizi, S. Tishkoff, R. Hudson, B. Lahn. Science, 2005

449 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Aging, Genetics, Physiology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cc4c683b432d953daea13b514f3ff5f3c41386cc

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Genetics

In Physiology

A. Varki

Citations in the corpus

How culture shaped the human genome: bringing genetics and the human sciences together (2010, background): “Another interesting case concerns the brain growth and development-related genes abnormal spindle, microcephaly associated ( ASPM ) and microcephalin 1 ( MCPH1 ), which show signs of natural selection and a marked geographic structur”
The fate of mutations surfing on the wave of a range expansion. (2006, background): “Finally, the recent observation of several haplotypes in brain genes found at much higher frequencies outside Africa than in sub-Saharan Africa (e.g., Evans et al. 2005; Mekel-Bobrov et al. 2005) could also be explained by the surfing mechanism.”
The Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (P-FIT) of intelligence: Converging neuroimaging evidence (2007, background): “[aREJ] Woods, R. P., Freimer, N. B., De Young, J. A., Fears, S. C., Sicotte, N. L., Service, S. K., Valention, D. J., Toga, A. W. & Mazziota, J. (2006) Normal variants of Microcephalin and ASPM do not account for human brain size variability.”
Comparative Genomics (2007, unknown): “Some genes that are candidates for human-specific selection lead to intriguing and exciting possibilities, such as alterations in FOXP2 implicated in language acquisition (Enard et al. 2002) and MCPH1 and ASPM implicated in brain size (Evans et al. 2005; Mekel-Bobrov et al. 2005).”
Technical innovations drive the relationship between innovativeness and residual brain size in birds (2009, unknown): “Genes affecting multiple neural networks (Green et al. 2009) and whole brain size (Evans et al. 2005; Mekel-Bobrov et al. 2005) as well as developmental schedules of embryonic neurogenesis leading to differences in the whole telencephalon (Striedter & Charvet 2008, 2009) and cortex (Chenn & Walsh…”
Recordkeeping and Human Evolution (2006, unknown): “30 Evans et al. (2005) and Mekel-Bobrov et al. (2005) document that two genes causing primary microencephaly, a condition in which the brain is severely reduced in size, have continued to evolve via natural selection until very recently.”
Comparing the human and chimpanzee genomes: Searching for needles in a haystack (2005, background): “appear to have undergone human-specific adaptive evolution (Evans et al. 2005; Mekel-Bobrov et al. 2005).”
A Map of Recent Positive Selection in the Human Genome (2006, background): “Indeed, there are a number of recent reports of genes that show signals of very strong and recent selection in favor of new alleles: for example, in response to malaria [3–5]; at the lactase gene in response to dairy farming [6]; at a salt sensitivity variant in response to climate [7]; and in genes”