Reading the genetic instruction books of gorillas and chimpanzees has provided more insight into what sets humans apart from their closest primate relatives. The two new studies also provide details about how these primate species may have evolved.
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Comparing a newly compiled genetic blueprint, or genome, of a western lowland gorilla named Kamilah with the genomes of humans and chimpanzees has revealed that the three species didn’t make a clean break when splitting from a common ancestor millions of years ago. Although humans are more closely related to chimps over about 70 percent of the human genome, about 15 percent of the human genome bears a closer relationship to gorillas. An international group of researchers reports the findings, which come from the first gorilla genome to be deciphered, in the March 8 Nature.
A separate study of western chimpanzees, published online March 15 in Science, also has implications for understanding the human-chimp split. The new work shows that humans and chimps have different strategies for shuffling their genetic decks before dealing genes out to their offspring. Neither humans nor chimps shuffle genetic material randomly across the genome. Instead, both species have what are called hot spots, locations in the genetic material where matching sets of chromosomes recombine most often, Gil McVean, a statistical geneticist at the University of Oxford in England and colleagues report.