PLEASE NOTE: The results of this study are known to be wrong due to a bug in the computer program used. A new study that uses several different computer programs shows an 88% overall similarity.
I have written about the similarity between human and chimpanzee DNA three times before (here, here, and here). It’s an important question for creationists, intelligent design advocates, and evolutionists alike, since the chimpanzee is supposed to be the closest living relative to human beings. As a result, a comparison of chimp DNA to human DNA gives us some idea of what the process of evolution would have to accomplish to turn a single apelike ancestor into two remarkably different species like chimpanzees and people.
Early on, it was widely thought that human DNA and chimp DNA were 99% similar. As I discussed in my first post on this subject, that was based on a very limited analysis of only a minute fraction of human and chimp DNA. Now that the entire set of nuclear DNA (collectively called the “genome”) of both humans and chimpanzees have been sequenced, we now know that the 99% number is just plain wrong. Interestingly enough, however, even though both genomes have been fully sequenced with a reasonable amount of accuracy, no one can agree on exactly how similar the two genomes are.
Why is that? Because comparing genomes is a lot harder than you might think. While we know the sequence of the chimp and human genomes really well, we don’t understand the DNA itself. Indeed, there are large sections of DNA that seem to be functional, but we simply have no idea what they do. As a result, comparing the genomes of two different species can be very, very tricky.
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