Science Daily features an interesting report today, which you can read here:
Humans share over 90% of their DNA with their primate cousins. The expression or activity patterns of genes differ across species in ways that help explain each species’ distinct biology and behavior.
DNA factors that contribute to the differences were described on Nov. 6 at the American Society of Human Genetics 2012 meeting in a presentation by Yoav Gilad, Ph.D., associate professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Gilad reported that up to 40% of the differences in the expression or activity patterns of genes between humans, chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys can be explained by regulatory mechanisms that determine whether and how a gene’s recipe for a protein is transcribed to the RNA molecule that carries the recipe instructions to the sites in cells where proteins are manufactured.
Related notes:
This can’t be right.
Over on the other thread, wd400 told us it was, what, less than 2% difference? Whatever happened to 99% the same, 98% the same, and so on?
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Good research, though. I expect the role of regulatory material (both in DNA and outside of DNA) will be shown to have more and more function as time goes on. The whole system is built upon regulation and coordinated function. The old Central Dogma of DNA -> RNA -> protein -> function is becoming less and less useful every day.
Primates. They weren’t specifically saying chimps/bonobos which is commonly cited at 4-5% when indels are counted. However, I’ve heard some creationists cite this line:
Is this a reliable metric?
I’ve got papers which have percentage similarity all over the place:
here are a few of my notes along that line:
No one knows what the genetic difference between chimps and humans is because no one has done a complete side-by-side comparison.
Actually Joe I left this one early study out,
Do Human and Chimpanzee DNA Indicate an Evolutionary Relationship?
Excerpt: Today, however, we have the majority of the human genome sequences, practically all of which have been released and made public. This allows scientists to compare every single nucleotide base pair between humans and primates—something that was not possible prior to the human genome project. In January 2002, a study was published in which scientists had constructed and analyzed a first-generation human chimpanzee comparative genomic map. This study compared the alignments of 77,461 chimpanzee bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) end sequences to human genomic sequences. Fujiyama and colleagues “detected candidate positions, including two clusters on human chromosome 21, that suggest large, nonrandom regions of differences between the two genomes” (2002, 295:131). In other words, the comparison revealed some “large” differences between the genomes of chimps and humans.
Amazingly, the authors found that only 48.6% of the whole human genome matched chimpanzee nucleotide sequences. [Only 4.8% of the human Y chromosome could be matched to chimpanzee sequences.] This study compared the alignments of 77,461 chimpanzee sequences to human genomic sequences obtained from public databases. Of these, 36,940 end sequences were unable to be mapped to the human genome (295:131). Almost 15,000 of those sequences that did not match human sequences were speculated to “correspond to unsequenced human regions or are from chimpanzee regions that have diverged substantially from humans or did not match for other unknown reasons” (295:132).
http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2070
Thank you, however that is still not a complete side-by-side comparison. But if that is any indication then the “over 90%” is wrong too.
BA77:
Thanks for the citations. Will be interesting to see if these hold up. As I think some have long suspected, the “98% similarity” (or 97% or 99% or whatever is often cited) is another of the evolutionary myths and follows a familiar pattern — put forward on very slim evidence in order to prop up a desired narrative.
Now in some cases it may have been innocent, based, for example, on the old, facile, idea that all that matters is gene-producing sequences and that their location and positioning don’t matter. In other instances, there seems to have been a bit more deliberate reporting of the “favorable” numbers.
This yEC says again that DNA likeness does not equal biological relatedness.
We were created in gods image and simply given the best type of body on earth for fun and profit.
These percentage things are still hinting it matters how close in determining if related.
If even they bred a ape with a human the result would still be a human 100% and in no way have ape intelligence.
I welcome our bodies being as close as possible to a ape body because it could only be that way, looks that way, and doesn’t matter one bit.