An international team of scientists, with English participation, has sequenced the DNA of the Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii). The subsequent sequencing of five other orangutans in Sumatra and Borneo five (Pongo pygmaeus) has shed light on the evolution of great apes and demonstrates the great genetic diversity of these species.
"The orangutan environment is more diverse (from the genetic point of view) than the average human," he says Devin Locke, author of the study published in Nature and evolutionary geneticist at the Genome Center at Washington University in St. Louis (USA). For sequencing
have cataloged some 13 million DNA variations orangutan. Thus scientists have shown orangutans in Sumatra and Borneo were separated about 400,000 years ago, when previous estimates had placed the division a million years ago. Currently, there are only about 50,000 orangutans in Borneo and 7,000 in Sumatra continue to live in the wild.
The orangutan genome provides new details of the evolution and provided scientists with new knowledge about the unique aspects of human DNA that separate man from the great apes. Research shows that the human genome and the orangutan are identical at 97%. The chimp and humans share 99% of their genes for evolutionarily separated 6 million years ago, while the orangutan and humans split off much earlier, 14 million years ago.
An endangered species
In Malay, orangutan means "man the forest. "orangutan studies are important because these primates are subjected to intense ecological pressure. The number of copies still shrinking as humans invade their habitat." Orangutans spend more than 95% of their time in trees. They travel through the trees, live in trees and foraging in the trees. But not all genetic diversity of the world can save them in the wild if their habitat is destroyed, "says Locke. Among the great apes, orangutans are more distant cousins \u200b\u200bof humans.
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