On Jan. 26, 2011, the Orangutan Genome Sequencing Consortium, a collaboration between the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine and The Genome Institute at Washington University, St. Louis, announced they had sequenced the genome of the orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus).

The study revealed that the structural evolution of the orangutan genome has proceeded much more slowly than other great apes, evidenced by fewer rearrangements, less segmental duplication, a lower rate of gene family turnover and surprisingly quiescent Alu repeats, which have played a major role in restructuring other primate genomes.

This primate model organism is more distant from humans than chimpanzees but closer than the rhesus monkey, making it important for the study of human biology. The analysis of the genome sequence was published in Nature.