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This finding is consistent with the smaller population of eastern lowland gorillas, which is merely one-tenth of the 200,000 estimated living western lowland gorillas. The researchers also noticed greater genetic diversity in the western versus the eastern lowland genetic samples. This split is comparable in some ways to the split between chimpanzees and bonobos, or modern humans and Neanderthals. The split between eastern and western gorillas was much more recent, in the last million years or so, and was gradual, although they are now genetically distinct. The team found that divergence of gorillas from humans and chimpanzees occurred around ten million years ago. Although we commonly think of species diverging at a single point in time, this does not always reflect reality: species can separate over a long period of time. This paper also illuminates the timing of splits between species. Striking examples, they said, were variants linked to dementia and dangerously enlarged hearts in humans. The researchers also mentioned that, in several cases, a genetic variation thought to cause disease in humans was associated with a normal state in gorillas. Other genes comparatively examined were those possibly related to growth hormones, sperm function, and defense against viruses. Gorillas often drag their knuckles when they walk. Gorillas have a gene to make a protein for the leathery texture of their knuckle pads. We also sampled DNA sequences from other gorillas in order to explore genetic differences between gorilla species.” “Using DNA from Kamilah, a female western lowland gorilla, we assembled a gorilla genome sequence and compared it with the genomes of the other great apes. It also lets us explore the similarities and differences between our genes and those of the gorilla, the largest living primate,” said Aylwyn Scally, first author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. “The gorilla genome is important because it sheds light on the time when our ancestors diverged from our closest evolutionary cousins. Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the United Kingdom led the study, with contributions from several other institutions, including the University of Washington. This study provides a new perspective on human origins and is an important resource for research into human evolution and biology, as well as for gorilla biology and conservation. This is the first time scientists have been able to compare the genomes of humans and all three living great apes: chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. While confirming that our closest relative is the chimpanzee, the team showed that much of the human genome more closely resembles the gorilla than it does the chimpanzee genome. Thus, there are potential functional consequences of this widespread structural change in humans affecting the surfaces of cells throughout the body.The gorilla is the last genus of the living great apes to have its genome decoded. The level of sialic acid hydroxylation (level of Neu5Ac versus Neu5Gc) is known to positively or negatively affect several of these endogenous and exogenous interactions. As terminal structures on cell surfaces, sialic acids are involved in intercellular cross-talk involving specific vertebrate lectins, as well as in microbe-host recognition involving a wide variety of pathogens. Thus, the enzymatic capacity to express Neu5Gc appears to have been suppressed sometime after the great ape-hominid divergence. However, traces of Neu5Gc occur in some human tissues, and others have reported expression of Neu5Gc in human cancers and fetal tissues.
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This enzymatic activity is present in chimpanzee cells, but not in human cells. Biosynthetically, Neu5Gc arises from the action of a hydroxylase that converts the nucleotide donor CMP-Neu5Ac to CMP-Neu5Gc. This marked difference is also seen amongst cultured lymphoblastoid cells from humans and great apes, as well as in a variety of other tissues compared between humans and chimpanzees, including the cerebral cortex and the cerebrospinal fluid. We find that while Neu5Gc is essentially undetectable on human plasma proteins and erythrocytes, it is a major component in all the four extant great apes (chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla and orangutan) as well as in many other mammals. Earlier studies suggested that humans may not express N-glycolyl-neuraminic acid (Neu5Gc), a hydroxylated form of the common sialic acid N-acetyl-neuraminic acid (Neu5Ac). The sialic acids are major components of the cell surfaces of animals of the deuterostome lineage.