Branching out: what omics can tell us about primate evolution

The study of primate comparative genomics has long been a focus of research, particularly in the context of understanding human evolutionary history. Recently, high-throughput methods have become accessible that allow us to tackle these questions at scale by comparing genomes within and between species, or looking at gene regulatory and expression changes between species and tissues. This burst in large-scale genomic studies has drastically increased the resolution at which we are now able to understand the evolutionary forces acting upon our own species. Furthermore, the drop in sequencing costs has made it possible to go beyond generating datasets that focus purely on human biology, and to begin incorporating larger genomic studies of non-human primates. Here, we give an overview of recent advances in large-scale high-throughput studies across the whole primate radiation.