eli5: When scientists say that humans share a certain percentage of our genes with another species (chimpanzees, bananas, whatever), what actual genes do we have in common, or is that in the “we’restill figuring that out” part of science?
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Imagine DNA as a really long cookbook that tells us how to make the various parts of a body. This means that there are recipes in it that tell us how to make a lung or an eye or a blood cell directly from atoms. Now, in terms of basic composition and structures, almost all animals are made of the same parts, so their DNA would also contain the instructions need to make those cells. This means that if we compare the recipes in two given animal’s DNA, we are going to see a lot of identical or extremely similar parts. Since DNA is really just a long string of 4 different types of chemicals, we can really just compare the strings of DNA and determine which parts are similar.
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