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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No, it’s pretty much figured out. The genes are nothing more than sequences of a couple of basic chemicals, called nucleic bases, in order that varies from organism to organism, and from species to species. And the sequence is extremely super long, like billions of elements long. Add a couple of more chemicals to this sequence and you have the DNA.
Anyways, for many species, specific parts of sequences are similar. Very often, similarities reach more than 90%. That is what is meant by shared genes.
What confuses a lot of people is they think that genes=traits. It is kinda true, but not directly. Most of the gene sequences are garbage, they dont induce any protein creation. Other sequences, only trigger other portions of the gene chain, and these in turn encode certain types of proteins.
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