• Question: what is the difference between peoples genes

    Asked by defo not finn to Barbara, Matt, Ravinder, Sophie, Tristan on 16 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Barbara Shih

      Barbara Shih answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      There are a lot of small differences between people’s genes (it’s estimated that 99.9% of genes are similar between any two humans), the different forms are known as alleles. These differences might because one allele makes a slightly differently shaped protein that doesn’t work as well (protein is the molecule that carry out functions), or one allele might make more of one protein. Another possibility is copy number variation – some people might have more copies of a gene than others. Other variations include something called epigenetics, which are chemical changes in the DNA sequences, making it easier/harder to read a gene.

    • Photo: Matthew Moore

      Matthew Moore answered on 19 Mar 2015:

      There doesn’t tend to be so much difference actually! It is in the rest of the DNA, the parts of DNA that aren’t genes where there is the most difference.

      This is because genes are somewhat fine-tuned to create a protein with a particular function, introducing mutations is more often than not going to be negative and even ‘break’ the protein that it produces, so aren’t conserved in the population.

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