Monday 25 December 2017

What percentage of DNA do people share?


If you picked two people in the world at random, sequenced each of their entire genome, and compared their DNA, what would the expected percentage match be?



Answer



Based on fine scale mapping of human genome structural variation, which is expanded on here, according to this study, the amount of genome structural (nucleotide diversity) ranges from 0.1% to 0.4% (look under section "Fine-scale map of human genome structural variation"). Hence humans have an up to 99.9% nucleotide similarity. And according to this study the average proportion of nucleotide differences between a randomly chosen pair of humans (i.e., average nucleotide diversity, or pi) is consistently estimated to lie between 1 in 1000 and 1 in 1500.


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