are the horse and chicken related?

[kevinnnnni]

according to the amino acid sequence, the horse and chicken are different only by one amino acid? does this mean that they are related through evolution? why or why not?

[mith]

That statement is false. They might differ in one AA perhaps according to one gene, but certainly not in every gene.

[Darby]

You could answer yes or no in my class - it's the rationale you give that would be the important part.

But I suspect you'd be well-served by going with "yes," and getting into how related organisms have homologous proteins...

[Anaximenes]

Like all members of the animal kingdom, they must share a distant common ancestor (they both have what is known as eukaryotic cell structure). They're related in the same sense that all modern animals, plants and fungi are related - very distantly. At some stage in primeval natural history, a single species would have sired both the animals which would evolve into chickens and those which would evolve into horses.

I'm not completely sure, but I'd hazard a guess that the common ancestor would have been a primitive dinosaur. Aves (birds) and mammals are both descended from dinosaurs as far as I know.

[alextemplet]

Mammals are not descended from dinosaurs but from a family of reptiles that was closely related to the earliest ancestors of the dinosaurs. This would most likely put the common ancestor of chickens and horses in the early Triassic period.