What makes humans different?

We know that chimpanzees are close relatives of humans on the evolutionary road, and chimpanzees are genetically similar to us

"I believe that the brain is the key to understanding what a person

To find the answer, Professor Jakobsson and his colleagues decided to compare the brain cells of humans and chimpanzees

This technology was recognized by the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2012.

Using this pluripotent stem cell technology, Professor Jakobsson’s research team only needs to obtain some human and chimpanzee skin cells, then reprogram them into stem cells, and then guide the stem cells to differentiate into forebrain neural progenitor cells (fbNPC)

▲Schematic diagram of the experimental process of cultivating brain cells with induced pluripotent stem cells from humans and chimpanzees (picture source: reference [1])

After a series of analyses such as sequencing the cells obtained after differentiation, the researchers were surprised to find that in the development of human and chimpanzee brain cells, some neglected DNA sequences may play a considerable role, which eventually led to us and chimpanzees.

These DNA sequences belong to the long neglected majority in the genome

The DNA sequence they discovered is a so-called structural variation of DNA, consisting of a long string of continuously repeated nucleotide sequences, called a variable number of tandem repeats VNTR

But this study pointed out that there is such a DNA structural variation that affects the expression activity of a variety of transcription factors in human cells, thereby controlling the gene regulatory network during human brain development

Note: The original text has been deleted

Reference materials:

[1] Pia Johansson et al.

[2] What makes us human? The answer may befound in overlooked DNA.