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Not so similar after all...
Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2004 5:41 pm
by I'm Murrin
Scientist have recently managed to sequence a chimpazee chromosome, and while the difference between Chimp and human DNA is only 1.44%, those small differences have a much larger effect than previously thought.
Link
Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2004 12:35 pm
by A Gunslinger
Yes, but I still like bananas and jumping on luggage.
Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2004 4:00 pm
by aTOMiC
A very interesting article, Murrin. Based on the title I was expecting the details to be a little more dramatic but it does confirm what would seem to be pretty obvious and that is that humans are on a unique evolutionary path with few legitimate relatives to accompany us on the journey.
Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2004 12:34 pm
by Nav
The 98.5% factor is even less of a shock when you factor in the presence of introns, 'silent' regions of DNA that do not encode protein and are more involved in regulatory affairs. The regions of DNA which do encode protein (exons) only make up 1.1-1.4% of the genome, and so any changes in exons will have a significant effect on the phenotype of an organism. I suspect a fair bit of the 1.5% difference occurs within exons, and much of our similarity to chimps is related to the mechanisms which replicate, regulate and express our genes.