Scientists unleashed a torrent of studies comparing the genetic coding for humans and chimpanzees on Wednesday, reporting that 96 percent of our DNA sequences are identical. Even more intriguingly, the other 4 percent appears to contain clues to how we became different from our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, they said.
"We're really looking at an individual evolutionary event, and this is spectacular," said University of Washington geneticist Robert Waterston, senior author of a study in the journal Nature presenting the draft of the chimpanzee genome.
The achievement should lead to discoveries with implications for human health, including new approaches to treating age-old diseases, said Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.
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