Chimp and human

[Michael Witty]

> In fact, you're quite wrong.  Whole genomes can and have been compared, by
> looking at the kinetics of renaturing of thermally denatured DNA, and this
> has been done for a number of species including chimps and humans, in such
> papers as Thermal stability of human DNA and chimpanzee DNA
> heteroduplexes. Science 1976 Nov 19;194(4267):846-8 Deininger PL, Schmid
> CW.  It's been a little while since I looked at this paper, but as I
> recall the number was more like 98.5% similarity, a ballpark that has been
> amply confirmed by sequencing.  

You are right, I had forgotten about this.  Can you tell me what level of
accuracy this has? I would be interested to know if the number 98% really
is justified.

> I don't know why you dragged "political correctness" into a simple
> scientific question

I have only ever heard this 98% figure from people who want to drag a
scientific figure, which they don't understand very much, into a
sociological argument.  Mike.