Abstract
Human and mouse orthologs are expected to have similar biological functions; however, many discrepancies have also been reported. We systematically compared human and mouse orthologs in terms of alternative splicing patterns and expression profiles. Human-mouse orthologs are divergent in alternative splicing, as human orthologs could generally encode more isoforms than their mouse orthologs. In early embryos, exon skipping is far more common with human orthologs, whereas constitutive exons are more prevalent with mouse orthologs. This may correlate with divergence in expression of splicing regulators. Orthologous expression similarities are different in distinct embryonic stages, with the highest in morula. Expression differences for orthologous transcription factor genes could play an important role in orthologous expression discordance. We further detected largely orthologous divergence in differential expression between distinct embryonic stages. Collectively, our study uncovers significant orthologous divergence from multiple aspects, which may result in functional differences and dynamics between human-mouse orthologs during embryonic development.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Li Zhang and Rong Cheng from East China Normal University for their helpful discussions. We are also grateful to the Supercomputer Center of East China Normal University. This work was supported by the China Human Proteomics Project (2014DFB30010), the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (2015AA020104,), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31071162), and the Graduate School of East China Normal University.
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Significant variations in alternative splicing patterns and expression profiles between human-mouse orthologs in early embryos
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Chen, G., Chen, J., Yang, J. et al. Significant variations in alternative splicing patterns and expression profiles between human-mouse orthologs in early embryos. Sci. China Life Sci. 60, 178–188 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-015-0348-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-015-0348-5