Researchers have finished the first draft of the genome sequence of the chimpanzee, the National Human Genome Research Institute announced Wednesday, Dec. 10. Data on the genome sequence has been put in free public databases and is available to scientists around the world.

Work is also now under way to compare the chimp genome to that of the human, an effort that researchers hope will provide insights into human biology, evolution, and health.

A team of scientists at many institutions, including the UW, are performing the comparative analysis. Results of the analysis of the human and chimp genomes should be published next year.

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, a preliminary alignment of the chimp and human genomes, meant to assist in the comparative analysis, 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.

Print this article

Email this article to a Colleague