Link to The Australian
Not so close to relatives
Leigh Dayton, Science writer
September 01, 2005
THE first comparison of the genetic blueprints of chimpanzees and people reveals that our closest cousins aren't as close as scientists thought.
While the two primate species are very similar indeed, their genetic code is only 96per cent identical, not 98 or 99per cent, as previously believed, claims a consortium of 67 international researchers who decoded and analysed the sequence of genetic material that makes a chimp a chimp.
"We now have a nearly complete catalogue of the genetic changes that occurred during the evolution of the modern human and chimpanzee species from our common ancestor," said co-leader Tarjei Mikkelsen of the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University in Cambridge.
The research was welcomed as a "historic achievement" by Francis Collins, leader of one of two teams that sequenced the human genome in 2002.
Comparing both genomes will become an "enormously powerful tool" for understanding human biology and human diseases, he said.
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After humans, rats and mice, chimps are the fourth mammal species to have the genetic code deciphered.
Among the findings the team reported was the observation of significant differences between chimps and humans in parts of the genome linked to the acquisition of speech in humans and protection against Alzheimer's disease in chimps.
