Chimp Genome Sequence Drafted

Pan troglodytes - more commonly known as chimps - are among our closest relatives on the evolutionary tree. Work is under way to compare the chimp genome to that of the human genome, an effort that scientists hope will provide insights into primate biology, evolution, and health.

Researchers finished the first draft of the genome sequence of the chimpanzee in December 2003. Data on the genome sequence have been put in free public databases and are available to scientists around the world.

A team of scientists at many institutions, including the UW, are performing the comparative analysis of the chimp and human genomes.

The initial draft of the chimp genome has been put on the National Institutes of Health database GenBank. The data will also go to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's Nucleotide Sequence Database and the DNA Data Bank of Japan.

In addition, the preliminary alignment of the chimp and human genomes is available through the University of California, Santa Cruz's Genome Browser, the National Center for Biotechnology Information's Map Viewer, and the European Bioinformatics Insitute's Ensembl system.