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Published online on January 23, 2006, 10.1073/pnas.0510716103
PNAS | January 31, 2006 | vol. 103 | no. 5 | 1370-1375


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ANTHROPOLOGY / EVOLUTION
Variable molecular clocks in hominoids

Navin Elango*, James W. Thomas{dagger} NISC Comparative Sequencing Program{ddagger},§, Soojin V. Yi*,¶

*School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332; {dagger}Department of Human Genetics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA 30322; and {ddagger}Genome Technology Branch and National Institutes of Health Intramural Sequencing Center, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892

Communicated by Morris Goodman, Wayne State University, School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, December 13, 2005 (received for review September 12, 2005)

Generation time is an important determinant of a neutral molecular clock. There are several human-specific life history traits that led to a substantially longer generation time in humans than in other hominoids. Indeed, a long generation time is considered an important trait that distinguishes humans from their closest relatives. Therefore, humans may exhibit a significantly slower molecular clock as compared to other hominoids. To investigate this hypothesis, we performed a large-scale analysis of lineage-specific rates of single-nucleotide substitutions among hominoids. We found that humans indeed exhibit a significant slowdown of molecular evolution compared to chimpanzees and other hominoids. However, the amount of fixed differences between humans and chimpanzees appears extremely small, suggesting a very recent evolution of human-specific life history traits. Notably, chimpanzees also exhibit a slower rate of molecular evolution compared to gorillas and orangutans in the regions analyzed.

comparative genomics | generation time | hominoid evolution | primate genomics

Author contributions: J.W.T. and S.V.Y. designed research; N.E. and S.V.Y. performed research; J.W.T. and N.C.S.P. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; N.E. and S.V.Y. analyzed data; and N.E., J.W.T., and S.V.Y. wrote the paper.

Conflict of interest statement: No conflicts declared.

Abbreviation: UCSC, University of California, Santa Cruz.

§ National Institutes of Health Intramural Sequencing Center (NISC) Comparative Sequencing Program: Leadership provided by Eric D. Green, Robert W. Blakesley, Gerard G. Bouffard, Nancy F. Hansen, Baishali Maskeri, Jennifer C. McDowell, and Morgan Park.

To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: soojinyi{at}gatech.edu.

© 2006 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA


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