Molecular evidence on Primate phylogeny from DNA sequences

Abstract

Evidence from DNA sequences on the phylogenetic systematics of primates is congruent with the evidence from morphology in grouping Cercopithecoidea (Old World monkeys) and Hominoidea (apes and humans) into Catarrhini, Catarrhini and Platyrrhini (ceboids or New World monkeys) into Anthropoidea, Lemuriformes and Lorisiformes into Strepsirhini, and Anthropoidea, Tarsioidea, and Strepsirhini into Primates. With regard to the problematic relationships of Tarsioidea, DNA sequences group it with Anthropoidea into Haplorhini. In addition, the DNA evidence favors retaining Cheirogaleidae within Lemuriformes in contrast to some morphological studies that favor placing Cheirogaleids in Lorisiformes. While parsimony analysis of the present DNA sequence data provides only modest support for Haplorhini as a monophyletic taxon, it provides very strong support for Hominoidea, Catarrhini, Anthropoidea, and Strepsirhini as monophyletic taxa. The parsimony DNA evidence also rejects the hypothesis that megabats are the sister group of either Primates or Dermoptera (flying lemur) or a Primate-Dermoptera clade and instead strongly supports the monophyly of Chiroptera, with megabats grouping with microbats at considerable distance from Primates. In contrast to the confused morphological picture of sister group relationships within Hominoidea, orthologous noncoding DNA sequences (spanning alignments involving as many as 20,000 base positions) now provide by the parsimony criterion highly significant evidence for the sister group relationships defined by a cladistic classification that groups the lineages to all extant hominoids into family Hominidae, divides this ape family into subfamilies Hylobatinae (gibbons) and Homininae, divides Homininae into tribes Pongini (orangutans) and Hominini, and divides Hominini into subtribes Gorillina (gorillas) and Hominina (humans and chimpanzees). A likelihood analysis of the largest body of these noncoding orthologues and counts of putative synapomorphies using the full range of sequence data from mitochondrial and nuclear genomes also find that humans and chimpanzees share the longest common ancestry.

Evolution of Primate Cognition

“…From the point of view of a chimpanzee or a bonobo, humans are a much closer relative than the Asian orangutan. The exact resolution of the relationships among the African apes has been controversial, but most modern evidence strongly supports the chimpanzee-human clade (Goodman et al, 1994;Kim & Takenaka, 1996): chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than they Figure 1. Primate phylogeny.…”

System-wide Genomic and Biochemical Comparisons of Sialic Acid Biology Among Primates and Rodents

“…Details regarding the first two are presented here, and evaluation of HF1 will be reported elsewhere. 9 Siglecs have multiple extracellular Ig-like domains, followed by a single transmembrane domain and a short cytoplasmic tail (4,33). The first Ig-like domain (Ig1, V-set Ig-like domain) is known to be responsible for Sia recognition.…”

Loss of N-glycolylneuraminic acid in humans: Mechanisms, consequences, and implications for hominid evolution

“…Since the great apes are our closest evolutionary cousins (King and Wilson, 1975;Sibley and Ahlquist, 1987;Caccone and Powell, 1989;Goodman et al, 1994;Ruvolo, 1997;Takahata and Satta, 1997), the human loss of Neu5Gc expression must have occurred sometime after the ape-human common ancestor. A secondary consequence of this loss is that humans also have much higher levels of Neu5Ac, the precursor molecule to Neu5Gc.…”

“…Given the remarkable progress of molecular biology techniques, the deciphering of most of the human genome (Lander et al, 2001;Venter et al, 2001), and the relative ease of obtaining genomic DNA noninvasively from humans and other primates, the genetic approach should, in principle, be somewhat easier than the others mentioned. In fact, apart from the general realization that our genomic DNA sequences are remarkably similar to those of the great apes (King and Wilson, 1975;Sibley and Ahlquist, 1987;Caccone and Powell, 1989;Goodman et al, 1994;Ruvolo, 1997;Takahata and Satta, 1997;Kaessmann et al, 2001;Chen and Li, 2001), there have been relatively few specific genetic differences between humans and apes uncovered to date (reviewed in Gagneux and Varki, 2001). This has led some to call for a great ape/ primate genome project (McConkey and Goodman, 1997;, to accelerate progress in this area.…”