The Story of Flo, an Aging Chimpanzee Mother

Flo, inevitably, began to show her age. She wasn't strong enough to wean Flint when the time came, nor to care for her new infant Flame, born when Flint was only four and a half years old (the normal birth interval is five years or more). Flame disappeared during a time when Flo was too ill even to climb into a nest. Though she recovered somewhat after Flame's death, she did not have the strength to discipline Flint, who insisted on riding on her back and sleeping in her nest. When Flo died i...

 1.5 Percent Gene Difference Translates to Thousands of Pr...

But recent work shows that our genetic resemblance to our evolutionary cousins is not quite as close as we thought. Consider this. A 1.5 percent difference in protein sequence means that when we line up the same protein (say, hemoglobin) of humans and chimps, on average we’ll see a difference at just one out of every 100 amino acids. But proteins are typically composed of several hundred amino acids. So a 1.5 percent difference in a protein 300 amino acids long translates into about four di...