Hubei Key Laboratory of Agricultural Bioinformatics, College of Informatics, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, PR China.
Hubei Key Laboratory of Agricultural Bioinformatics, College of Informatics, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, PR China.
Drug Discov Today. 2020 May;25(5):821-827. doi: 10.1016/j.drudis.2020.03.001. Epub 2020 Mar 7.
Accumulated evolutionary knowledge not only benefits our understanding of the pathogenesis of diseases, but also help in the search for new drug targets. This is further supported by the recent finding that human accelerated regions (HARs) identified by comparative genomic studies are linked to human neural system evolution and are also associated with neurological disorders. Here, we analyze the associations between HARs and diseases and drugs. We found that 32.42% of approved drugs target at least one HAR gene, which is higher than the ratio of in-research drugs. More interestingly, HAR gene-targeted drugs are most significantly enriched with agents treating neurological disorders. Thus, HAR genes have important implications in medical genetics and drug discovery.
积累的进化知识不仅有助于我们理解疾病的发病机制，还有助于寻找新的药物靶点。最近的研究发现，通过比较基因组研究确定的人类加速区域（HARs）与人类神经系统的进化有关，也与神经紊乱疾病有关，这进一步证实了这一点。在这里，我们分析了 HARs 与疾病和药物之间的关联。我们发现，32.42%的已批准药物至少针对一个 HAR 基因，这一比例高于在研药物。更有趣的是，HAR 基因靶向药物在治疗神经紊乱疾病的药物中最为显著。因此，HAR 基因在医学遗传学和药物发现中具有重要意义。
