Temporal Dynamics and Genetic Control of Transcription in the Human Prefrontal Cortex

In order to gain a global molecular perspective on how the human genome gives rise to the brain, we explore the temporal dynamics and genetic control of transcription in human dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in an extensive series of brain tissue from fetal development through aging. We discover a wave of gene expression changes occurring during fetal development which are reversed in early postnatal life. One half century later in life, this phenomenon is mirrored in aging as well as neurodegeneration. While we identify thousands of robust associations of individual genetic polymorphisms with gene expression, we also demonstrate that there is no association between the total extent of genetic differences between subjects and the global similarity of their transcriptional profiles. Hence, the human genome produces a consistent molecular architecture in the prefrontal cortex, despite millions of genetic differences across individuals and races. To enable further discovery, this entire dataset is freely available (GEO). The gene expression from this study can be interrogated gene-by-gene with a biologist-friendly web application available at http://braincloud.jhmi.edu/plots/.