Chimpanzee Genome Sequenced

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Posted by michael on Thursday December 11, 2003 @01:32AM from the in-laws dept.

dharash writes "Nature reports 'Researchers today released a draft version of the genetic sequence of our closest relative, the chimpanzee Pan troglodytes..The differences between the chimp's genetic code and ours should reveal what makes us human...' Click here for the entire article."

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Assuming... by kinnell · 2003-12-11 01:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

Assuming, of course, that the differences between the two genome sequences are greater than the difference between two animals in the same species.

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If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Great - this will be useful by wowbagger · 2003-12-11 02:13 · Score: 5, Funny

cd slashtroll
cvs rdiff -r chimp -r human genome | patch -p1 ./make

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Funded by Michael Jackson by AtariAmarok · 2003-12-11 02:24 · Score: 4, Funny

This research has been funded by Michael Jackson, after his recent trouble. If they can genetically modify "Bubbles" to look like the "Home Alone"-era MacCauley Culkin, Michael might be able to avoid future legal trouble.

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Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
1. Re:Funded by Michael Jackson by fireduck · 2003-12-11 04:36 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  totally offtopic, but...
  
  regarding Bubbles: When chimps get older they get aggressive and really can't be handled by people anymore (unless you're Steve Irwin or any other of those nuts on Animal Planet). Jackson gave up Bubbles a while back, and the chimp is currently living at a facility in the north end of the San Fernando Valley, along with Geoffrey the giraffe (of Toys R Us commercial fame).
  
  I had the quite unique experience of visiting this place last year, seeing where all the famous animal actors live. Bubbles was quite threatening, but the giraffe was loads of fun...
Re:I already figured it out!! by Cujo · 2003-12-11 02:24 · Score: 3, Informative

Here's a hint! We're not monkeys!

Neither are chimps.

We already know that we're closely related to chimps in the gross sense - now we can get a much more precise idea of where, when and how we diverged. Pretty exciting stuff, but they should keep digging for bones - there's nothing like ground truth.

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Helium balloons want to be free.
Re:Great by Ashran · 2003-12-11 02:59 · Score: 3, Interesting

There is one fundamental problem in simulating the whole genome and see what it grows.
For every atom you simulate you need like 10000 times the atoms to store the information about it.
This means the physical space alone needed to store a full human in memory would be 10000 times bigger than the human :/

Lets see if quantum computers can help us here, because right now we can only store ~1 bit per atom, and we'd need atleast a few bits to describe what kind of atom it is and a few more bits to describe their position, states, charges, relation to nearby atoms etc. Superpositions might help us here, giving us more than 1 bit per atom.

This is just discussing the storage aspect, if that should be realtime you'd need a SHITLOAD of processors working on that.

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Should reveal what makes us human? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-11 03:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

I doubt this will even reveal what makes a chimp a chimp.

People expect too much from genome sequencing. This is a dead genome, not an expressive genome configured with epigenetic states in a runtime environment as would exist in a living cell. This is a good first step, but a genome sequence is barely a start and inferring high-level characteristics from such a sequence is ridiculous.