Comparative transcriptome in large-scale human and cattle populations

Yuelin Yao, Shuli Liu, Charley Xia, Yahui Gao, Zhangyuan Pan, Oriol Canela-Xandri, Ava Khamseh, Konrad Rawlik, Sheng Wang, Bingjie Li, Yi Zhang, Erola Pairo-Castineira, Kenton D’Mellow, Xiujin Li, Ze Yan, Cong-jun Li, Ying Yu, Shengli Zhang, Li Ma, John B. ColePablo J. Ross, Huaijun Zhou, Chris Haley, George E. Liu*, Lingzhao Fang*, Albert Tenesa*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)
38 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Cross-species comparison of transcriptomes is important for elucidating evolutionary molecular mechanisms underpinning phenotypic variation between and within species, yet to date it has been essentially limited to model organisms with relatively small sample sizes.

RESULTS: Here, we systematically analyze and compare 10,830 and 4866 publicly available RNA-seq samples in humans and cattle, respectively, representing 20 common tissues. Focusing on 17,315 orthologous genes, we demonstrate that mean/median gene expression, inter-individual variation of expression, expression quantitative trait loci, and gene co-expression networks are generally conserved between humans and cattle. By examining large-scale genome-wide association studies for 46 human traits (average n = 327,973) and 45 cattle traits (average n = 24,635), we reveal that the heritability of complex traits in both species is significantly more enriched in transcriptionally conserved than diverged genes across tissues.

CONCLUSIONS: In summary, our study provides a comprehensive comparison of transcriptomes between humans and cattle, which might help decipher the genetic and evolutionary basis of complex traits in both species.

Original languageEnglish
Article number176
Number of pages24
JournalGenome Biology
Volume23
Issue number1
Early online date22 Aug 2022
DOIs
Publication statusFirst published - 22 Aug 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022. The Author(s).

Keywords

  • Comparative transcriptome
  • Gene co-expression
  • Heritability enrichment
  • Inter-individual variability
  • RNA-seq

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