title: Eighty percent of proteins are different between humans and chimpanzees.
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.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
authors.forename: Galina
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Glazko
authors.forename: Vamsi
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Veeramachaneni
authors.forename: Masatoshi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nei
authors.forename: Wojciech
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Makałowski
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D006801:Humans; D009693:Nucleic Acid Hybridization; D002679:Pan troglodytes; D011506:Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D013045:Species Specificity
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins