问答题 Nobody would mistake a human for a chimpanzee, yet we share more DNA than mice and rats do. How can that be? Advances in genomics are starting to unravel the mystery. Line up the genomes of humans and chimps side by side and they differ by little more than 1 per cent. That may not seem like much, but it equates to more than 30 million point mutations. Mound 80 per cent of our 30, 000 genes are affected, and although most have just one or two changes (Gene, vol 346, p 215) , these can have dramatic effects. The protein made by the human geneFOXP2, which helps us to speak, differs from its chimp counterpart by just two amino acids, for example. And small changes in the microcephalin(微脑磷脂) and ASPM genes may underlie big differences in brain size between humans and chimps.无
【正确答案】人类和黑猩猩外貌迥异,没有人会搞错,但这两者间的基因相似度却很高,高过野鼠和家鼠之间的基因相似度。这怎么可能呢?基因组学研究正在解开这个谜底。把人类和黑猩猩的染色体组并排比较,二者差异略高于百分之一。看似不多,但却相当于三千多万的点突变。我们30,000个基因的约百分之八十都会受影响,尽管多数仅有一两处变异(见《基因》第346卷第215页),但影响可能十分巨大。比如,人类FOXP2基因所制造的蛋白质作用于我们的语言能力,只有两个氨基酸与黑猩猩的相应蛋白质不同。此外,微脑磷脂和ASPM基因里的细微差别可能决定了人类和黑猩猩大脑尺寸的巨大差异。
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