Nancy Bennett <nancyb at ignet.com> writes:
> My question is -- can anybody even wildly estimate the degree to which any
> two randomly chosen humans (or let's make it easier and say any two randomly
> chosen Europeans) are, in fact, genetically similar? I recently read on the
> Human Genome Project web site that humans may have as few as "one gene in
> 500" that differs between individuals. This would suggest that, on average,
> the genes at 99.8% of all loci are identical. Is this an accurate
> estimate??
Yes, depending on what you mean by `gene' and `differ'. But it rarely
makes sense to talk about this data in absolute terms. You may have 19/20
positions correct for the state lottery, yet this does not mean you
have won 19/20ths of the lottery.
--
Julian Assange |If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people
|together to collect wood or assign them tasks and
proff at iq.org |work, but rather teach them to long for the endless
proff at gnu.ai.mit.edu |immensity of the sea. -- Antoine de Saint Exupery
