The Y chromosome in primates — including humans — is evolving much more rapidly than the X chromosome, new research on six primate species suggests.
For instance, humans and chimpanzees share upwards of 98% of their DNA across the whole of the genome, but just 14% to 27% of the DNA sequences on the human Y chromosome are shared with our closest living relatives.
The finding surprised scientists, given that humans and chimpanzees diverged just 7 million years ago — a blip in evolutionary terms.
"I expect my genome to be very different to that of bacteria or insects because a lot of time has elapsed, evolutionarily speaking," study co-author Brandon Pickett, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at the National Institutes of Health, told Live Science. "But from other primates, I expect it to be pretty similar."