DNA Lab

We did the DNA lab in class today.
What you do is to put different colored beads onto a string according to human, chimpanzee, gorilla and common ancestor's DNA pattern and compare these four different patterns. We find out that human, chimpanzee and gorilla's DNA all share some similarities with the common ancestor's DNA, which proves that human, chimpanzee and gorilla are evolved from a common ancestor. However, human DNA has more similarities with chimpanzee DNA than with gorilla DNA. This shows that human and chimpanzee are more closely related.

We made a cladogram according to the relationship between human, chimpanzee, gorilla and common ancestor. Human, chimpanzee and gorilla all branch out form the common ancestor, gorilla has more similarities with the common ancestor, so it is the closest to the common ancestor. The next one is chimpanzee and after that is human. Human and chimpanzee do not have too much space between them because they are more closely related.
we also talked about convergence and divergence. For convergence, it means that animals with different ancestors evolved body structures with similar functions. And for divergence, it means animals with a common ancestor evolved body structures with different functions.