[extropy-chat] BIO: Chimps and Humans

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003, Harvey Newstrom wrote:

> The genetic differences between chimps and humans are a magnitude
> more complex and a magnitude less understood than we thought before this
> research.  Those complexities may expand another magnitude before we are
> finished.

Harvey, I'm not understanding this assertion.  There was already a very
large debate in the literature with respect to human-chimp similarity.
The NY Times article says 98.8% and I think that is *HIGHLY* questionable.
The number I've more commonly seen is 98% and even that has been open to
some debate.

Don't believe everything in the NY Times as a hand-me-down from god.
They may make mistakes and/or bias their opinions.  (So long as they
have a source -- they may not choose to evaluate how *good* the source
is in reality.)

As the article points out -- there are differences.  Now we can cite
what many of the differences are.  However it is going to take a lot
of additional work to determine what the functional aspects of those
differences are.  Just because you change an amino acid in a protein
doesn't mean the general function of that protein will change.  That
requires careful biochemical studies to determine.  Any biochemist
or molecular biologist knows that.  You need to know the K_m, K_cat,
folding time, temperature stability, etc. to know the precise
behavior of a protein -- all of those could impact a difference
between chimpanzees and humans.  So any serious scientists have
not underestimated the studies which will be required to tease
out the significant differences.  At the same time our ability
to conduct these studies -- particularly the structural studies --
is increasing significantly.  So we will get the answers faster
than we would have a few years ago.

If you are commenting on the fact that 2D comparisons are insufficient
then I agree with you (as would most serious scientists).

Robert