Scientists already have completed genomes for humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. Researchers plan to map the genomes of many more individual ape species.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Kay Prufer is with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. She was one of the researchers who mapped the bonobo genome. They used DNA from an eighteen-year-old female bonobo named Ulindi, who lives at the Leipzig zoo.
KAY PRUFER: “Bonobos and chimpanzees are both our closest living relatives and that is something that you can clearly see in the genome.”
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: The researchers found that in three percent of the shared genes, humans are more closely related to bonobos and chimpanzees than the two apes are to each other. The genome showed that bonobos share about ninety-eight point seven percent of their genes with people and ninety-nine point six percent with chimps. That means they are almost as closely-related to humans as they are to chimpanzees.
The genome maps of bonobos and chimpanzees also show that humans are more closely-related to the two great apes than scientists once thought. Here again is researcher Kay Prufer.
KAY PRUFER: “So I think the most interesting thing that I saw in the genome is really this one point five percent of the genome where bonobos are closer to us, and the one point five percent of the genome where chimpanzees are closer to us.”
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25