Nick Patterson, Ph.D., is a Senior Computational Biologist at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Dr. Patterson has three decades experience in statistical data analysis. He has a Ph.D. in mathematics and 30 years experience in cryptography (for both the U.S. and British governments) and finance. At the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Britain, he played a major role in the invention of public key cryptography, which now underlies secure transactions on the Internet. Since coming to the Broad Institute five years ago, he has made contributions to microarray analysis, comparative genome analysis, haplotype inference, medical genetics, theoretical population genetics, and primate evolution. The interview is about Mr Patterson’s last paper published in Nature. Mr Patterson’s analysis of human and chimpanzee genoma shows that human–chimpanzee speciation occurred less than 6.3 million years ago and probably more recently, conflicting with some interpretations of ancient fossils. Most strikingly, chromosome X shows an extremely young genetic divergence time, close to the genome minimum along nearly its entire length. These unexpected features would be explained if the human and chimpanzee lineages initially diverged, then later exchanged genes before separating permanently. That is, the ancestors of humans and chimps hybridated for about 4 milion years. Nick Patterson Massachusettsko Broad Instituteko genetista «Harreman haien ondorengoak gu edo txinpantzeak diren ez dakigu» Nick Patterson geneen detektibe antzeko bat da. Kriptografian aditua da eta egun Interneten segurtasunerako erabiltzen den kodifikazioa berak garaturiko sistemetan oinarritzen da, besteak beste. Bost urte dabil Massachusettsko Teknologia Instituteko (MIT) Broad Institutuan genetika aztertzen. Patterson da txinpantzeen eta gizakien arbasoen arteko nahasketa izan zela proposatu duen ikerketaren egile nagusia. Less