Divergence between samples of chimpanzee and human DNA sequences is 5%, counting indels
Open accessAbstract
Five chimpanzee bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) sequences (described in GenBank) have been compared with the best matching regions of the human genome sequence to assay the amount and kind of DNA divergence. The conclusion is the old saw that we share 98.5% of our DNA sequence with chimpanzee is probably in error. For this sample, a better estimate would be that 95% of the base pairs are exactly shared between chimpanzee and human DNA. In this sample of 779 kb, the divergence due to base substitution is 1.4%, and there is an additional 3.4% difference due to the presence of indels. The gaps in alignment are present in about equal amounts in the chimp and human sequences. They occur equally in repeated and nonrepeated sequences, as detected by repeatmasker ( http://ftp.genome.washington.edu/RM/RepeatMasker.html ).
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3.5% of the sequence differences between chimpanzees and humans is due to INDELs.
“It has been estimated that 3.5% of the sequence differences between chimpanzees and humans is due to INDELs [34,35] and that this INDEL variation may be of particular evolutionary significance [9].”
From Identification, characterization and comparative genomics of chimpanzee endogenous retroviruses (2006) · cites this paper as [35]
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“It has been proposed that these gaps or INDELs may be of evolutionary significance (for example, [9]).”
BackgroundInfluential
- Authors
- Britten, R. J.
- Affiliations
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Corresponding author
- Britten, Roy J.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2002-10-04
- Volume
- 99
- Issue
- 21
- Pages
- 13633-13635
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC129726
- OpenAlex
- W2110973918
- Cited by
- 296
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 16 · 2012: 10
- FWCI
- 8.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Plant Science › Chromosomal and Genetic Variations
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genomic variations and chromosomal abnormalities
- Keywords
- sequence divergence, indels, base substitutions, human genome, sequence alignment, repetitive DNA, human-chimpanzee comparison
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Pan troglodytes, DNA, DNA Transposable Elements, Humans, Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid, Species Specificity, Gene Rearrangement, Sequence Alignment, Sequence Deletion, Evolution, Molecular, Chromosomes, Artificial, Bacterial
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