@article {310524,
	title = {Distinctive structures between chimpanzee and human in a brain noncoding RNA.},
	journal = {RNA},
	volume = {14},
	year = {2008},
	month = {2008 Jul},
	pages = {1270-5},
	abstract = {<p>Human accelerated region 1 (HAR1) is a short DNA region identified recently to have evolved the most rapidly among highly constrained regions since the divergence from our common ancestor with chimpanzee. It is transcribed as part of a noncoding RNA specifically expressed in the developing human neocortex. Employing a panoply of enzymatic and chemical probes, our analysis of HAR1 RNA proposed a secondary structure model differing from that published. Most surprisingly, we discovered that the substitutions between the chimpanzee and human sequences led the human HAR1 RNA to adopt a cloverleaf-like structure instead of an extended and unstable hairpin in the chimpanzee sequence. Thus, the rapid evolutionary changes resulted in a profound rearrangement of HAR1 RNA structure. Altogether, our results provide a structural context for elucidating HAR1 RNA function.</p>
},
	keywords = {Animals, Base Sequence, Brain, Evolution, Molecular, Genome, Human, Humans, Molecular Sequence Data, Nucleic Acid Conformation, Pan troglodytes, RNA, Untranslated},
	issn = {1469-9001},
	doi = {10.1261/rna.1054608},
	author = {Beniaminov, A. and Westhof, E. and Krol, A.}
}
