Quote of the Week
(January 27, 2025)

The Human Genome Project and its successors surprised many by revealing an unexpectedly low number of human genes relative to many other organisms — roughly the same number, for example, as in the simple, one-millimeter-long, transparent roundworm, Caenorhabditis elegans. Many began to ask: If genes really do account for the organism in all its complexity, how can it be that a primitive worm boasts as many genes as we do? “As far as protein-coding genes are concerned”, wrote Ulrich Technau, a developmental biologist from the University of Vienna, “the repertoire of a sea anemone ... is almost as complex as that of a human”.

A further revelation only compounded the difficulty: our own genome was found to have a great deal in common with that of many animals. It was reported, for example, that we share about 98.5% of our genome with chimpanzees. A good deal of verbal hand-wringing and chest-beating ensued. How could we hold our heads up with high-browed, post-simian dignity when, as the New Scientist reported in 2003, “chimps are human”? If the DNA of the two species is more or less the same, and if, as nearly everyone seemed to believe, DNA is destiny, what remained to make us special? Such was the fretting on the human side, anyway. To be truthful, the chimps didn’t seem much interested.

(from Chapter 7, “Epigenetics: A Brief Introduction”, in Organisms and Their Evolution — Agency and Meaning in the Drama of Life)

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