A Pan-oramic view: insights into hominoid evolution through the chimpanzee genome

The draft sequence of the second primate genome, of the common chimpanzee Pan troglodytes, is now complete. Together with its sibling species the bonobo Pan paniscus, chimpanzees are our closest living relatives and the availability of their genome sequence provides countless opportunities for evolutionary studies. Determining the mechanisms and identifying the evolutionary forces that have shaped the genomes of Homo and Pan will be challenging, because they will depend on the identification of relevant genetic changes against a vast background of neutral differences. Linking differences between the genomes to phenotypic consequences in both species and their respective evolutionary trajectories will require the collaboration of researchers from diverse fields, ranging from genomics to behavioral sciences. Interpreting these genomic comparisons will depend crucially on expanding the chimpanzee phenotype data set and on the availability of high-quality tissue samples.