Decoding chimps, understanding humans

Scientists said Wednesday that they had determined the precise order of the 3 billion bits of genetic code that carry the instructions for making a chimpanzee, mankind’s closest cousin.
The fresh unraveling of chimpanzee DNA allows an unprecedented gene-to-gene comparison with the human genome, mapped in 2001, and makes plain the evolutionary processes through which chimps and humans arose from a common ancestor about 6 million years ago.
By placing the two codes alongside each other, scientists identified all 40 million molecular changes that separate the two species and pinpointed the mere 250,000 that seem most responsible for the differences.
HoustonChronicle.com – Chimp DNA decoded, compared with human’s

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