PLoS Genetics: An Evolutionarily Conserved Sexual Signature in the Primate Brain
“We identified 85 genes with common sex-biased expression, in both human and macaque and 2 genes, X inactivation-specific transcript (XIST) and Heat shock factor binding protein 1 (HSBP1), that were consistently sex-biased in the female direction in human, macaque, and marmoset. These observations imply a conserved signature of sexual gene expression dimorphism in cortex of primates. Further, we found that the coding region of female-biased genes is more evolutionarily constrained compared to the coding region of both male-biased and non sex-biased brain expressed genes.”
I’m not really sure what this implies (and of course it’s not at all clear how or whether this scales to behavior) but it makes me a little uncomfortable. Cool research, though.
