Essay from the year 2002 in the subject Biology – Genetics / Gene Technology, grade: 1.1 (A+), Oxford University (New College), language: English, abstract: In the mid-1980s one of the most important studies by Sibley and Ahlquist on our relationship to apes and monkeys found that our closest relatives are the chimpanzees and the bonobos. The study of genetic diversity within both human and chimpanzee populations has been of major interest as researchers have been and are still trying to find out about the differences in genetic diversity between the two otherwise so closely related species. The genetic diversity refers to the amount of genetic variation found in a population. It has been discovered that chimpanzees have a greater total genetic diversity than humans, but that there are exceptions such as in the major histocompatibility complex in which chimpanzees display a low genetic diversity. I am going to explore how the total genetic diversity is surveyed in and distributed among human and chimpanzee populations and I am going to compare their levels of total diversity. I am also going to explore whether different types of polymorphism reveal the same patterns of distribution within and among populations.