Draft of Chimp Genetic Map Published
Scientists have completed a draft of the chimpanzee genetic blueprint and placed the information into a free, public database, scientists announced Wednesday.
The draft, covering an estimated 88% to 90% of the genome’s gene-coding regions, has been carefully aligned with the human genome on the Web site, ncbi.nih.gov/Genbank, allowing a direct comparison of the two.
“We want to let the scientific community know that the sequence is available and they can have access to it,” said Richard K. Wilson, director of the genome sequencing center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
An international team of scientists is comparing the two genomes and is scheduled to publish its findings within several months. They hope to find clues to what makes the two species so similar yet so strikingly different.
Sequencing the chimp genome was ranked a high priority by the government’s National Human Genome Research Institute. The information is expected to provide new approaches to fighting disease because chimps and humans succumb to different ailments: Chimps, for instance, don’t develop AIDS or malaria.
In addition, by comparing human and chimp genomes, scientists hope to learn more about the types of DNA changes that spawn speciation and to gather clues to mysteries such as aging and brain development -- areas where the biology of chimps and human beings differ sharply.
“It is, of course, great news,” Dr. Ajit Varki, professor of medicine and cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego, said of the completed sequence. Varki had previously uncovered chemical differences between chimps and humans that may play a role in disease susceptibility, and he said he planned to screen through the newly posted chimp genome to search for more.
However, he said, it would not be easy to catalog all the genetic differences between the two species because the chimp genome sequence has gaps and is less precise than the sequence obtained for the human genome.
The sequencing was conducted by scientists at Washington University and the Eli & Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with funding from the genome institute.
Now that the chimp genome is nearly complete, scientists are shifting gears. Researchers at the Broad institute will complete the dog genome by spring, said Broad scientist Kerstin Lindblad-Toh. Next up: the DNA of an opossum, Monodelphis domestica.
Washington University scientists, while participating in the opossum project, plan to further hone the chimp genome, finish the chicken genome and sequence the genome of a flatworm.
In addition to a host of microbes, scientists have sequenced a range of important animal genomes including that of the human, mouse, rat and fruit fly.
