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©Marko Grönroos, 1998

USENET News talk.origins

Säie: Question 1: How do they know Chimpanzee DNA is a 99% match to human DNA?

Tex <tex AT fakemail PISTE com> writes: > Sorry for my ignorance, but I've heard this claim for many years. How > do they know this is a fact when they only recently decoded the > genetic sequence for human dna? I'm not a biologist, but I think it's done by very simple DNA sequence comparisons. Note that it's not necessary to compare entire DNA, just small sequences. Comparing entire DNA would give more precision, but not significantly. With short sequences we can very easily compare thousands of species. Take a look at GenBank (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) and find a sequence a same gene from two species. One of the most commonly used is cytochrome C, which I think is a mitochondral gene: Homo sapiens (human) cytochrome c oxidase subunit IV gene, exon 3.                         1 aaagtgttgt gaagagcgaa gacttttcgc tcccagctta tatggatcgg cgtgaccacc                      61 ccttgccgga ggtggcccat gtcaagcacc tgtctgccag ccagaaggca ctgaaggaga                   121 aggagaaggc ctcctggagc agcctctcca tggatgagaa agtcgagt Pan troglodytes (chimpanzee) cytochrome c oxidase subunit IV gene, exon 3.                         1 aaagtgttgt gaagagcgaa gacttttcgc tcccagctta tatggatcgg cgtgaccacc                      61 ccttgccgga ggtggcccat gtcaagcacc tgtctgccag ccagaaggcc ttgaaggaga                   121 aggagaaggc ctcctggagc agcctctcca tggatgagaa agtcgagt You can see two differences in these sequences of 168 base pairs. This would give some 1.2% difference. Of course if you want more accuracy, you'll have to take longer sequences, and preferably from different parts of the DNA to get a better statistical coverage. Nearby sequences might be correlated because different parts of DNA can have different mutation rates. -- -- Marko Grönroos, magi AT iki PISTE fi (http://www.iki.fi/magi/) -- Paradoxes are the source of truth and the end of wisdom

Edellinen säie: The Inference of Design (was ...ATPase...)
Seuraava säie: Annoyed by mainstream childrens books
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