Fig. 3. Comparative great ape genomics can identify human alleles of interest.

a, Comparisons between humans, chimpanzees and other great apes, as well as other primate or mammalian outgroups have revealed distinct classes of human-specific genetic changes. Light grey block represents DNA, mid-grey represents genes or regulatory elements of interest and dark grey bars represent single nucleotide changes. b, Schematic illustrates that humans could have inherited interesting and impactful alleles that are human specific (left), or alleles shared with either chimpanzees or gorillas through incomplete lineage sorting. This implies that some of the diversity we observe in human populations has not arisen since the split with chimpanzees but rather could be far more ancient. c, Comparisons with ancient genomes from archaic hominins, such as Denisovans and Neanderthals, can help to understand the age and history of human-specific changes. Part b is adapted from ref. ³²⁷.