Archive for Biology

Human vs. Chimps DNA

October 9, 2006 · Filed under New concepts, Biology

What makes us different – Time, October 9, 2006, p .45-53

Not really a top-respected source, but the article is packed with interesting numbers and it’s very easily available, which I consider a good thing for those, who’d like to see it with their own eyes.

Most interesting fact related to memetics is that so called “functional non-coding regions” in DNA activate different genes in different areas of the brain, which only confirms the well-known fact that the brain has a structure and speciliazed parts. Still, memetic model sort of assumes that neurons are more or less uniform for the purposes of the memtic model. It does not really require that, but uniformity of neurons gives it a nice support. On another hand, uniformity for a specific (e.g. memetic) model does not require neurons to be completely identical. For example, in Windows Vista you can plug a USB flash drive into the computer and it will act as an additional RAM memory. Difference in the element base between RAM and flash memory will not matter much in this case. So, if some neurons prefer to connect to close neighbours, while others tend to grow long axons, may be not that important for memetics.

Among other things, the article mentions following interesting fatcs:

  • Human and chimp’s genomes are different only in 1.23%
  • “Most striking divergence” in Y chromosome
  • 29% of proteins are identical, most of those that differ, do so only by two amino-acid substitutions.
  • Humans have about 20,000 genes (current number 22,000, may drop as low as 19,000)
  • Molecular switches in non-coding regions of DNA may have a great impact in differences
  • Human and chimps split about 6.3 to 5.4 millions years ago
  • X chromosome diverged from chimps X chromosome about 1.2 millions years later than the rest of chromosomes.
  • Neanderthals existed from 500,000 years ago to about 28,000 years ago (last traces, Iberian Peninsula near Gibraltar)
  • Human history is about 50,000 generations
  • Mouse genome is about 90% the same as human, contains 21,000 genes.

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