Our disregard for our nearest kin is equal to our disregard for each other. More importantly, how few genetic changes there are between us. We are about to take sledgehammers to our own genome without any real sense of that subtlety.
Case in point: chimps rarely get Alzheimer’s. Therefore, let’s find that gene that protects them/harms us and deal with it. After our mucking about, will we even be capable of seeing we’ve lost creativity or a grasp of what freedom is? mjh
Scientists Complete Genetic Map of the Chimpanzee By Rick Weiss
The fresh unraveling of chimpanzee DNA allows an unprecedented gene-to-gene comparison with the human genome, mapped in 2001, and makes plain the evolutionary processes through which chimps and humans arose from a common ancestor about 6 million years ago.
By placing the two codes alongside each other, scientists identified all 40 million molecular changes that today separate the two species and pinpointed the mere 250,000 that seem most responsible for the difference between chimpness and humanness. …
As predicted by preliminary studies, the human and chimpanzee genetic codes are essentially 99 percent identical, a testament to how fundamentally similar the two species remain. At the same time, it is powerful evidence that seemingly modest changes in molecular code can lead to very different stations in the web of life.
Because of that 1 percent difference, experts noted, humans now dominate every ecosystem on Earth while chimpanzees and other great apes — a group that also includes bonobos, gorillas and orangutans — are at risk of becoming extinct within the next few decades, largely because of human activities. …
The human and chimpanzee genomes are distinguished by 35 million differences in individual DNA “letters” — each the result of a tiny, random mutation — and an additional 5 million larger differences in which entire chunks of DNA were either added to or deleted from one genome or the other.
All told, the two sequences differ by 4 percent. But three-quarters of the differences seem to be in non-functional parts of the genome, suggesting that a mere 1 percent variation makes all the difference.
Put another way, the difference between the human and chimp genomes is 10 times as great as the difference between any two humans. …
Acknowledging recent challenges by proponents of “intelligent design,” a proposition that posits the need for an intelligent creator, several scientists said the genome study offered elegant confirmation of Darwin’s vision of evolution.
One analysis, for example, showed that the accumulation of deleterious mutations in the human and chimp genomes is greater than in the mouse and rat genomes in just the proportion predicted by one of the mathematical corollaries of the theory of evolution.
“I can’t imagine Darwin hoping for a stronger confirmation of his ideas,” said Robert H. Waterston, who led the Washington University team.
First Chimp Fossils Found; Humans Were Neighbors
Cameron Walker for National Geographic News
Researchers have found the first reported chimpanzee fossils in Kenya’s Rift Valley, providing the first physical evidence that chimpanzees coexisted with early human ancestors, known as hominins.
Thousands of fossils, including the famous Australopithicus afarensis, “Lucy,” found in Ethiopia, have been filling in the hominin family tree. Early humans split off from a common ancestor shared with chimpanzees between five and eight million years ago.