Leipzig, Germany -- German scientists, using mice as models, have identified genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees that are produced by their distinct diets.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said humans consume diet significantly different from that of apes. Not only do humans consume much more meat and fat but they also cook food. However, the influence of diet on physiological and genetic differences between humans and other apes hasn't been widely examined.

By feeding laboratory mice different human and chimp diets over just a two-week period, the researchers were able to reconstruct some of the physiological and genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees.

The chimpanzee diet produced thousands of differences in the levels at which genes were expressed in the mouse livers but no such differences were observed in their brains.

A significant fraction of the genes that changed in the mouse livers had previously been observed as different between humans and chimpanzees. That, the researchers said, indicated the differences observed in those particular genes might be caused by the difference in human and chimpanzee diets.

The complex experiment is reported in the online journal PLoS One.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International.