Quantified similarity between starfish and human DNA

[KSA]

I remember my BIO textbook for non-bio majors saying something about Human and Starfish (or maybe echinoderms generally) DNA being very similar. Some web searches turn up recent, short news articles that talk about "surprising similarities," with no quantification.

My question is, how similar are Human and Starfish genomes? I'm looking for a simple comparison, like the often-quoted "humans and chimps share 99% of their DNA."

Tangentially, why would my textbook have mentioned this similarity in 1997 or so, when neither the Human nor Starfish genome had yet been fully sequenced?

[CXCR4]

That's great you are focusing on a starfish and human DNA. You said the research you found was from a text book right? I'll say about three years back I was focusing on a specific starfish which was indigenous to the south pacific. My studying has stopped since I am now back in school. I think they are an excellent candidate to study. However you said you wanted to know if a starfish and human DNA are similar. I am not a geneticist, at least not yet, however there is a website which allows you to study asterinas along with there genome sequence. I have not been on the website for months, but it will provide you with some help on comparing Homosapiens ( humans) vs. Asterina (starfish). The name of the site is http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed.

Most of the sequencing on this site is legit, however it has been done by someone other than the person studying it. Although it will still provide you with anserws now that you have brought the asterina's to my attention again I will try to study them some more. I hope this helps you out a bit.

Hey keep in Touch

[Julie5]

This is only an aside, but I've always loved telling non-biologists that humans are descended from starfish...

(well, from baby starfish anyway!)