Ninety-six percent of a chimpanzee’s genome is the same as a
human’s. It’s the other 4 percent, and the vast differences, that pique the
interest of Georgia Tech’s Soojin Yi. For instance, why do humans have a high
risk of cancer, even though chimps rarely develop the disease?
In research published in September’s American Journal of
Human Genetics, Yi looked at brain samples of each species. She found that
differences in certain DNA modifications, called methylation, may contribute to
phenotypic changes. The results also hint that DNA methylation plays an
important role for some disease-related phenotypes in humans, including cancer
and autism.