美国耶鲁大学Nenad Sestan等研究人员合作揭示灵长类动物背外侧前额叶皮层的分子和细胞演化。相关论文于2022年8月25日在线发表于国际学术期刊《科学》。

研究人员评估了来自成年人类、黑猩猩、猕猴和狨猴背外侧前额叶皮层（dlPFC）的600,000多个单核转录组。虽然大多数转录组定义的细胞亚型是保守的，但研究人员只在一些物种中检测到几个，并且在同源的神经元、胶质和非神经亚型中检测到大量物种特有的分子差异。后者的例子是，在某些神经元中，神经肽生长抑素（SST）和酪氨酸羟化酶（TH）（多巴胺生产中的限速酶）的表达在人类中的特异性转换，以及神经精神风险基因FOXP2的表达，它在小胶质细胞中是人类特异的，在第4层颗粒神经元中是灵长类特异的。

研究人员对dlPFC的细胞组合及其在类人灵长类动物中的共同和不同的特征进行了全面的调查。

据介绍，颗粒dlPFC是灵长类动物的一种演化上的特化，并集中参与了认知。

附：英文原文

Title: Molecular and cellular evolution of the primate dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

Author: Shaojie Ma, Mario Skarica, Qian Li, Chuan Xu, Ryan D. Risgaard, Andrew T. N. Tebbenkamp, Xoel Mato-Blanco, Rothem Kovner, eljka Krsnik, Xabier de Martin, Victor Luria, Xavier Martí-Pérez, Dan Liang, Amir Karger, Danielle K. Schmidt, Zachary Gomez-Sanchez, Cai Qi, Kevin T. Gobeske, Sirisha Pochareddy, Ashwin Debnath, Cade J. Hottman, Joshua Spurrier, Leon Teo, Anthony G. Boghdadi, Jihane Homman-Ludiye, John J. Ely, Etienne W. Daadi, Da Mi, Marcel Daadi, Oscar Marín, Patrick R. Hof, Mladen-Roko Rasin, James Bourne, Chet C. Sherwood, Gabriel Santpere, Matthew J. Girgenti, Stephen M. Strittmatter, André M. M. Sousa, Nenad Sestan

Issue&Volume: 2022-08-25

Abstract: The granular dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) is an evolutionary specialization of primates that is centrally involved in cognition. Here, we assessed over 600,000 single-nucleus transcriptomes from adult human, chimpanzee, macaque, and marmoset dlPFC. While most transcriptomically-defined cell subtypes are conserved, we detected several only in some species and substantial species-specific molecular differences across homologous neuronal, glial and non-neural subtypes. The latter are exemplified by human-specific switching between expression of the neuropeptide somatostatin (SST) and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), the rate-limiting enzyme in dopamine production, in certain interneurons, and also by expression of the neuropsychiatric risk gene FOXP2, which is human-specific in microglia and primate-specific in layer-4 granular neurons. We generated a comprehensive survey of dlPFC cellular repertoire and its shared and divergent features in anthropoid primates.

DOI: abo7257

Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo7257