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High-quality genomes reveal new differences between the great apes

High-quality genome sequences for some of the great apes have been assembled using state-of-the-art sequencing tools. The assemblies provide an unbiased comparison between humans and their closest evolutionary relatives.
  1. Aylwyn Scally

    1. Aylwyn Scally is in the Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EH, UK.

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Much of evolutionary biology is motivated by the principle that you cannot understand one species without comparing it with another. When nineteenth-century naturalists compared the anatomies of humans and other apes, it became clear that these species shared many features and had evolved from a common ancestor. More recently, developments in DNA sequencing — which enabled assembly of the human genome1 in 2001, followed by lower-quality ‘draft’ genomes for other great apes2–4 — have transformed our understanding of this evolutionary process. Writing in Science, Kronenberg et al.5 describe new great-ape genome assemblies, generated using a technology that surpasses previous methods. This work marks a new stage in our ability to study and compare these species.

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Nature 559, 336-338 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05679-9

References

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