Chimpanzés e humanos são 80% diferentes

Eighty percent of proteins are different between humans and chimpanzees

Galina Glazko, Vamsi Veeramachaneni, Masatoshi Nei, Wojciech Makayowski*

Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA

Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA

Received 12 August 2004; received in revised form 1 October 2004; accepted 5 November 2004

Available online 29 January 2005 - Gene 346 (2005) 215–219

Received by T. Gojobori

Abstract

The chimpanzee is our closest living relative. The morphological differences between the two species are so large that there is no problem in distinguishing between them. However, the nucleotide difference between the two species is surprisingly small. The early genome comparison by DNA hybridization techniques suggested a nucleotide difference of 1–2%. Recently, direct nucleotide sequencing confirmed this estimate. These findings generated the common belief that the human is extremely close to the chimpanzee at the genetic level. However, if one looks at proteins, which are mainly responsible for phenotypic differences, the picture is quite different, and about 80% of proteins are different between the two species. Still, the number of proteins responsible for the phenotypic differences may be smaller since not all genes are directly responsible for phenotypic characters.

D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Human; Chimpanzee; Genetic distance; Protein identity; Nucleotide identity

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