Abstract
The brain is the most complicated organ in the human body with more than ten thousand genes expressed in each region. The molecular activity of the brain is divergent in various brain regions, both spatially and temporally. The function of each brain region lies in the fact that each region has different gene expression profiles, the possibility of differential RNA splicing, as well as various post-transcriptional and translational modification processes. Understanding the overall activity of the brain at the molecular level is essential for a comprehensive understanding of how the brain works. Fortunately, the development of next generation sequencing technology has made it possible to measure the molecular activity of a specific tissue as a daily routine approach of research. Therefore, at the molecular level, the application of sequencing technology to investigate the molecular organization of the brain has become a novel field, and significant progress has been made recently in this field. In this paper, we reviewed the major computational methods used in the analysis of brain transcriptome, including the application of these methods to the research of human and non-human mammal brains. Finally, we discussed the utilization of transcriptome methods in neurological diseases.
Highlights
Humans and other mammalian species are very different in the aspect of several advanced behaviors, such as language, cognition and sleep
Transcriptomic data of the mammalian brain provides eminent opportunities to illuminate how the brain works in the molecular level
The current status of this field has provided us with great insight on the molecular developmental patterns of the brain, and we expect more primate brains to be included in future research
Summary
Humans and other mammalian species are very different in the aspect of several advanced behaviors, such as language, cognition and sleep. The most straightforward idea is that these behavioral differences are the result of many behavior related genes in the human genome, that are not found in other primates, or that the genes responsible for some human specific behaviors and other mammalian animals are quite different in structure Those differences, at the gene level, lead to different functions responsible for the regulation of behavior. This idea was rejected after obtaining some DNA and protein sequences from humans and humanoid primates such as chimpanzees. We describe normal gene networks identified in the brains of mice, non-human primates and humans We discuss their potential application to better understand brain diseases. Note that in this review we refer to “transcriptome” as the expression profile of all sets of RNA molecules in one cell or a population of cells and “gene expression analysis” as the investigation of expression profiles using computational approaches
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