Great Ape Phenome Project?

Varki, Ajit; Wills, Christopher; Perlmutter, David D.; Woodruff, David S.; Gage, Fred H.; Moore, James J.; Semendeferi, Katerina; Benirschke, Kurt; Katzman, Robert; Doolittle, Russell F.; Bullock, Theodore H.

doi:10.1126/science.282.5387.239d

Cited by 20 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…As discussed above, paucity of information regarding the "phenome" of the other living hominids is remarkable. [The term phenome has been used in many publicationse.g., Mahner & Kary (1997), Varki et al (1998), Paigen & Eppig (2000), Nevo (2001), Walhout et al (2002), Freimer & Sabatti (2003)-but still lacks a universally accepted definition. Discussions with others who have used the term suggest the following definition: The body of information describing an organism's phenotypes, under the influences of genetic and environmental factors.…”

Section: Relating Genomic To Phenomic Differences In the Context Of Ementioning

confidence: 99%

Genomic Comparisons of Humans and Chimpanzees

Varki

Nelson

2007

Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

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The genome consists of the entire DNA present in the nucleus of the fertilized embryo, which is then duplicated in every cell in the body. A draft sequence of the chimpanzee genome is now available, providing opportunities to better understand genetic contributions to human evolution, development, and disease. Sequence differences from the human genome were confirmed to be ∼1% in areas that can be precisely aligned, representing ∼35 million single base-pair differences. Some 45 million nucleotides of insertions and deletions unique to each lineage were also discovered, making the actual difference between the two genomes ∼4%. We discuss the opportunities and challenges that arise from this information and the need for comparison with additional species, as well as population genetic studies. Finally, we present a few examples of interesting findings resulting from genome-wide analyses, candidate gene studies, and combined approaches, emphasizing the pros and cons of each approach.

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Section: Relating Genomic To Phenomic Differences In the Context Of Ementioning

confidence: 99%

Genomic Comparisons of Humans and Chimpanzees

Varki

Nelson

2007

Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

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“…One important point that is not widely appreciated, however, is that the identification of genetic differences that distinguish humans from other animals is ultimately of little value if we cannot connect the genetic differences to phenotypic differences [71,72]. At the present time, the wealth of information about human-chimpanzee genetic differences stands in stark contrast to the poverty of our understanding of human-chimpanzee differences in brain organization.…”

Section: Making Room For Humans: the Critical Need For Human-chimpanzmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

Preuss

2006

J Biomed Discov Collaboration

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Understanding how humans differ from other animals, as well as how we are like them, requires comparative investigations. For the purpose of documenting the distinctive features of humans, the most informative research involves comparing humans to our closest relatives–the chimpanzees and other great apes. Psychology and anthropology have maintained a tradition of empirical comparative research on human specializations of cognition. The neurosciences, by contrast, have been dominated by the model-animal research paradigm, which presupposes the commonality of "basic" features of brain organization across species and discourages serious treatment of species differences. As a result, the neurosciences have made little progress in understanding human brain specializations. Recent developments in neuroimaging, genomics, and other non-invasive techniques make it possible to directly compare humans and nonhuman species at levels of organization that were previously inaccessible, offering the hope of gaining a better understanding of the species-specific features of the human brain. This hope will be dashed, however, if chimpanzees and other great ape species become unavailable for even non-invasive research.

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“…Pascal Gagneux (San Diego Zoological Society) summarized evidence from decades of work showing that the chimp and bonobo are our nearest relatives, followed by the gorilla and orangutan. Symposium co-organizer Ajit Varki (University of California, San Diego), with Chaitanya Baru (San Diego Supercomputer Center), outlined early efforts to complement the chimpanzee genome project with a "Great Ape Phenome Project" (9). This initiative aims to organize all extant datacurrently difficult to find-about phenotypic differences among the great apes.…”

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confidence: 99%