*********************************
There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
*********************************
Atlanta, GA | Posted: August 28, 2009
Summary Sentence:
Soojin Yi's Research on Human-chimp Interbreeding Featured in N
Full Summary:
Research on Human-chimp interbreeding from the lab of Soojin Yi,PhD, evolutionary geneticist in School of Biology at Georgia Tech, featured in Nature.
Soojin Yi - Assistant Professor, School of BiologyNature
Chimps are more promiscuous than humans and thus may have higher mutation rates in their males' DNA.ALAMY. A genetic analysis has called into question the controversial claim that early humans and chimpanzees interbred before splitting into separate species. "Many evolutionary biologists were pretty skeptical" about the interbreeding scenario, says evolutionary geneticist Soojin Yi of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. She argues that her explanation — which stems from promiscuity differences among primate species — is "simpler and hence more likely".... Now Yi, together with Daven Presgraves of the University of Rochester, have reanalysed the data and suggest that species differences in the levels of female promiscuity can account for the chromosomal inconsistency. The original hypothesis is "way more of a headache for evolutionary biologists", says Yi. The data "can also be explained very well by well-established ideas in molecular evolution"
