Researchers Dig Deeper into Differences Between Human Brains vs. Chimp Brains

Ninety-six percent of a chimpanzee’s genome is the same as a human’s — it’s the other 4 percent (and the vast differences) that intrigue Soojin Yi, a faculty member at Georgia Tech’s School of Biology. For example, why do humans have a high risk of cancer, while chimps rarely develop the disease?

According to research in the September edition of the American Journal of Human Genetics, after looking at brain samples from each species, Yi discovered that differences in certain DNA modifications, called methylation, may contribute to phenotypic changes. The results also suggest that DNA methylation plays a key role for some disease-related phenotypes in humans, such as cancer and autism. For more information, click here to read the full release.