New method reveals high similarity between gorilla and human Y chromosome

I've been thinking of how most of the Republican presidential candidates & their followers remind me of gorillas beating on their chests at each other.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-03/ps-nmr022616.php

Public Release: 2-Mar-2016
New method reveals high similarity between gorilla and human Y chromosome
Penn State

A new, less expensive, and faster method now has been developed and used to determine the DNA sequence of the male-specific Y chromosome in the gorilla.

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Surprisingly, we found that in many ways the gorilla Y chromosome is more similar to the human Y chromosome than either is to the chimpanzee Y chromosome," said Kateryna Makova, the Francis R. and Helen M. Pentz Professor of Science at Penn State and one of two corresponding authors of the paper. "In regions of the chromosome where we can align all three species, the sequence similarity fits with what we know about the evolutionary relationships among the species -- humans are more closely related to chimpanzees. However, the chimpanzee Y chromosome appears to have undergone more changes in the number of genes and contains a different amount of repetitive elements compared to the human or gorilla. Moreover, a greater proportion of the gorilla Y sequences can be aligned to the human than to the chimpanzee Y chromosome."

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To demonstrate the utility of the gorilla Y chromosome sequence they generated, the researchers designed genetic markers that can be used to differentiate the genetic relatedness among male gorillas and thus to aid in conservation genetics efforts targeted at preserving this endangered species.