01.31.08
Chimp/human diets
Why Humans Aren’t Chimps: We Eat Better
By Brandon Keim January 30, 2008
Why did humans and chimpanzees diverge so sharply on the primate family tree?
Because of our diets, say German anthropologists.
In a study published yesterday in Public Library of Science ONE, a team of Max Planck Institute researchers compared gene expression in three groups of mice — one given a cafeteria-style human diet, another given the fruits and veggies consumed by chimps in zoos, and the last given McDonald’s takeout.
The chimpanzee diet produced thousands of changes in gene expression, especially in the mice’s livers. The same genes have been observed to differ between humans and chimps, who are otherwise nearly 99 percent identical at the DNA level.
If human and chimp diets triggered such changes in mice, figured the researchers, maybe a few million years of eating well are the reason why people aren’t still sucking termites off sticks.