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Wound Healing

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Human Uniqueness Compared to "Great Apes": 
Likely Difference
MOCA Domain: 
Skin Biology and Disease
MOCA Topic Authors: 
Ajit Varki

Human wounds tend to gape and generally take a long time to heal.  Strong anecdotal evidence indicates that non-human primates heal wounds faster than humans.  For example, it is said that chimpanzees “heal over-night”, both in captivity and in the wild.     The mechanism of this apparent difference is unknown.  Interestingly, mice with a human-like defect in the CMAH gene showed delayed wound repair.

Related MOCA Topics
Related Topics:
TitleCertainty
CMAH (cytidine monophosphate-N-acetylneuraminic acid hydroxylase (CMP-N-acetylneuraminate monooxygenase) pseudogene)Likely
Timing

Timing of Appearance of the Difference in the Hominin Lineage.

For this entry assume that

  • the common ancestor of humans and old world monkeys was 25000 thousand (25 million) years ago
  • the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees was 6000 thousand (6 million) years ago
  • the emergence of the genus Homo was 2000 thousand (2 million) years ago
  • the common ancestor of modern humans was 100 thousand years ago

 

Definite Appearance: 
100 Thousand Years
References: 

Hedlund, M., Tangvoranuntakul, P., Takematsu, H., Long, J.M., Housley, G.D., Kozutsumi, Y., Suzuki, A., Wynshaw-Boris, A., Ryan, A.F., Gallo, R., Varki, N. and Varki, A.: N-glycolylneuraminic Acid Deficiency in Mice: Implications for Human Biology and Evolution. Mol. Cell. Biol., 27:4340-4346, 2007.