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Cross Breeding
Name: Zoran
Status: Student
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
Did anyone try cross-breeding of humans and chimpanzees ? What is known
is that the genetic difference between humans and
chimps is small ( compared to genetic difference between various animals
that have been successfully cross-bred ), that is, chimps and humans share
98.4 % DNA, which suggest that something like that is possible.
Replies:
All organisms share a good part of their DNA, and one organism will treat
another's DNA as its own (for the most part) but there are natural species
barriers to mating. For one thing, chimpanzees have 48 chromosomes and
humans have 46. After fertilization when the cell starts to divide, there
would be an uneven number of chromosomes between the male and female. The
cell would die. Also, in some species the male has two of the same sex
chromosomes and the female is the one with different chromosomes. Just
because the DNA (genes) are 99% the same doesn't mean that they are in the
same place on the same chromosomes. During homologous pairing in meiosis,
the chromosomes must match up. Besides, the human genome is estimated to
contain about 3 billion nucleotides (A, C, T, G's). 1% of that is still 3
million differences.
van hoeck
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Update: February 2012
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