Human Autosomal Nucleotide Positions Differing from Bonobo Instead Match Pig

Abstract

OverviewTo examine the hybrid hypothesis of human origins, a novel data mining program, BOOMSTICK, was used to scan the euchromatic portions of two target genomes, those of Homo sapiens and Pan paniscus. Each of the two genomes were broken up into 100-kB segments, each of which was searched for matches to a large set of porcine queries. All scans sought matches to the same set of 813,194 40-mer nucleotide queries randomly selected from the genome of Sus scrofa (domestic pig). For each of the two study organisms, mean segmental match rates (MSMRs) were then calculated for all segments in each of three categories: those segments occurring on autosomes, those on the X chromosome, and those on the Y chromosome. ResultsIn scans of single-copy regions (euchromatin) in both their Y chromosomes and their autosomes, it was found that the number of matches to randomly selected porcine queries was higher in humans than in bonobos. When autosomes were compared, matches were 1.3% higher in humans than in bonobos. This figure is equal to the percentage of human autosomal nucleotide positions bearing nucleotides that match in pig but not in bonobo. Remarkably, it agrees with the percentage of autosomal nucleotides previously reported to differ in bonobos and humans. So, the results of this study indicate that essentially all the nucleotide positions that differ in humans and bonobos, are the same in humans and pigs. In addition, the number of matches to pig queries found on the human Y chromosome was 34.5% higher than on the bonobo Y, and 12.4% higher than on the chimpanzee Y (the chimpanzee figure may be the more reliable of the two, since the bonobo Y nucleotide sequence file scanned contained only unlocalized scaffolds). MSMRs for the human and bonobo X chromosomes did not significantly differ.