Fig. 2.

Strategies to identify human-specific enhancers. a Methodology used to identify human-accelerated DNSase I hypersensitive sites (haDHSs) in [38]. Black bars, nucleotides that differ from the human sequence; blue bars, sites where all species differ from humans; dotted red lines, DHS and neutral sequence. b Five haDHSs showed different activity with human versus chimpanzee sequences in SK-N-MC cells. c Differentially active haDHS12/DAR12 (asterisk) overlaps previously identified HACNS219 [23] and is located near RNF145, a ring finger gene involved in cellular cholesterol metabolism [101]. d Brains of species studied in [43] (approximately to scale, colors label regions). Tree indicates approximate timing of splits between lineages (millions of years ago). e Workflow and (bottom) fraction of H3K27ac peaks that is differentially enriched (DE) between species per brain region. f Left: Percentage of HARs within conserved regulatory elements (CREs). Right: Most of the 240 HAR-containing CREs that align across species were not DE in human versus macaque and chimpanzee. g H3K27ac tracks for mouse, macaque, chimpanzee, and human cerebellum. Gray, shared enhancers; purple, DE enhancers higher in human versus macaque; red, HAR87. Enhancers gained in mouse or lost in primates (yellow) may compensate for the enhancer gained in primates (light blue) upstream of the CADM1 gene. Abbreviations: CB cerebellum, PFC prefrontal cortex, PcGm precentral gyrus, OP occipital pole, WM white matter, CN caudate nucleus, TN thalamic nucleus, Put putamen. Reproduced partially from [38, 43], with permission