The bonobo genome is sequenced. The letter reporting was recently published in Nature, and is available openly under the title, “The bonobo genome compared with the chimpanzee and human genomes.” Kay Prüfer from the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropologyis the lead author. There are some interesting preliminary comparisons such as:
- Bonobos and chimps have 99.6% sequence similarity
- Bonobos and humans have 98.7% sequence similarity
- The split of bonobo and chimpanzee is confirmed to have approx. 1 million years ago, with no inbreeding occurring
- 6% of the bonobo genome has evidence of incomplete lineage sorting(when an allele does not match the population history of a species)
- This has lead to the observation that ~1.6% of the bonobo genome is more similar to humans than chimpanzees
Prüfer, K., Munch, K., Hellmann, I., Akagi, K., Miller, J., Walenz, B., Koren, S., Sutton, G., Kodira, C., Winer, R., Knight, J., Mullikin, J., Meader, S., Ponting, C., Lunter, G., Higashino, S., Hobolth, A., Dutheil, J., Karakoç, E., Alkan, C., Sajjadian, S., Catacchio, C., Ventura, M., Marques-Bonet, T., Eichler, E., André, C., Atencia, R., Mugisha, L., Junhold, J., Patterson, N., Siebauer, M., Good, J., Fischer, A., Ptak, S., Lachmann, M., Symer, D., Mailund, T., Schierup, M., Andrés, A., Kelso, J., & Pääbo, S. (2012). The bonobo genome compared with the chimpanzee and human genomes Nature DOI: 10.1038/nature11128
