Next, the researchers injected the slightly different human and
chimpanzee versions of HARs into both sets of neurons.
Scientists had previously suspected that the most common human malaria parasite split from
a chimpanzee version millions of years ago.
The human version of that switch produces a 12 percent larger cortex than
a chimpanzee version does, the Duke team reports February 19 in Current Biology.
Or is
it the chimpanzee version of a secret handshake?
The brains of these genetically modified mice grew 12 percent bigger than ones given
the chimpanzee version of HARE5.
Not exact matches
Zhang compared the DNA nucleotide sequence of the human
version of ASPM to that of two of our great ape cousins, the
chimpanzee and the orangutan, as well to more distantly related animals such as rhesus monkeys, seals, dogs, and hamsters.
The massive analysis of human,
chimpanzee, and monkey tissue published Nov. 23 in the journal Science shows that the human brain is not only a larger
version of the ancestral primate brain but also one filled with distinct and surprising differences.
So Emerman and colleagues resurrected the analogous protein from PtERV1, based on its remnants in
chimpanzees, and inserted it into a defective
version of the mouse virus, which could infect cells but not reproduce.
The
chimpanzees were already experts at touching a series of numbers in the right order but had never been given a shared
version of the task.
Humans and
chimpanzees, for instance, have slightly different
versions of the hepatitis B virus, both of which likely mutated from a
version that infected their shared ancestor more than four million years ago.