Take a trip to the zoo and you can see gorillas are a lot like us. However, a new DNA study says we are even more similar than scientists thought.
From the evolutionary family tree, you would expect our DNA to be the most similar to chimps, our closest relatives. The new work found that is true for the most part, but it also found that a sizable portion of our genome is closer to a gorilla’s than to a chimp’s.
“The chimpanzee is often cited as ‘our closest living relative’ and this is certainly true based on total genome sequence, but the gorilla is nearly as close a relative,” Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University, who was not part of the project, said in an e-mail.
ACHIEVEMENT
That agrees with hints from with some smaller previous genetic studies. The latest work deciphered the entire genome of the gorilla, which Lovejoy called “a substantial achievement.”
It reveals “a closer connection between our genome and that of the gorilla than was previously appreciated,” Richard Gibbs and Jeffrey Rogers of the Baylor College of Medicine wrote in an editorial accompanying the work published in yesterday issue of the journal Nature.
With the new research, scientists now have complete genetic blueprints of the living great apes — humans, chimps, gorillas and orangutans — to compare and gain fresh understanding of how humans evolved and developed key traits such as higher brain function and the ability to walk upright.
Humans and chimps evolved separately since splitting from a common ancestor about 6 million years ago.
DNA MAP
The latest study was led by scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, a nonprofit British genome research center. Researchers mapped the DNA of a female gorilla and compared it with the genomes of humans and chimps.
As expected, most of the human genome was closer to the chimp’s than to the gorilla’s. However, in about 15 percent of the genome, human and gorilla resemble each other the most. In another 15 percent, chimp and gorilla DNA are closer to each other than chimp is to human.
Both those situations clash with what one would expect from the evolutionary tree, which says humans and chimps should always be the most similar, the researchers said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion