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iayork t1_iuwvvw8 wrote

Reply to comment by newappeal in What does it mean to have 2% Neanderthal DNA when all humans presumably share basically 100% of our DNA with them? by The_Imperial_Moose

To give OP an example: Imagine two books, 10 chapters long, almost exactly the same, but each page has a typo or two. In Chapter 7, say, one book may say "teh" instead of "the" on page 2, and the other may say "Neandertal" instead of "Neanderthal" on page 3; and so on. Overall, the books are 99.9% identical, but each chapter has a set of diagnostic typos.

Now we create a third book, by replacing chapter 7 of book 1 with chapter 7 of book 2. By comparing the pattern of typos with the parent books, we can clearly tell that chapter 7 comes from a different source.

Are the books 99.9% identical? Yes. Did book 3 get 10% of its content from a different source? Also yes.

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Rabwull t1_iuzpdhb wrote

I have never seen haplotypes described so simply and clearly. May I steal your analogy every time I explain this, forever? I can cite you as iayork (2022) if you like.

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newappeal t1_iv0ovwe wrote

I too will be using this analogy in the future. Thank you for adding this, u/iayork!

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Dan13l_N t1_iv0y384 wrote

But how do you know that the whole chapter 7 comes from a different source? What if only one paragraph comes from another source?

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Rabwull t1_iv2gbcz wrote

This is an excellent question. In reality, you only know the source between consistent diagnostic typos. If we run out of these typos 10 pages before the end of Chapter 7, we can't be sure from which source those last 10 pages come.

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