how did you become interested in DNA? Is it true we evolved from apes/monkeys? if not what animal have we evolved

Question: how did you become interested in DNA? Is it true we evolved from apes/monkeys? if not what animal have we evolved from? you said in the question "what would you do with the money"that you would buy lego peices how does that help with learning about DNA?
- Keywords:
  DNA,
  evolution,
  mammals
Asked by hols02horse to Nick on 12 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by bethanyh12.
- Nick Goldman answered on 12 Mar 2014:
  
  I got interested when I had a job at the Natural History Museum in London. That was in 1986–1988, and scientists there were just starting to use DNA from animals’ genomes to study their evolution.
  Scientists don’t normally say that humans evolved *from* apes/monkeys. What is true is that humans and apes/monkeys evolved from the same ancestors, millions of years ago.
  Lego doesn’t help me learn about DNA, but it helps me to teach other people about what I do. Clipping together a series of blocks in 4 different colours makes a simple model that is a bit like DNA, and I can use that to show people some of the problems we try to solve when we are comparing actual DNA sequences.

Question: how did you become interested in DNA? Is it true we evolved from apes/monkeys? if not what animal have we evolved from? you said in the question "what would you do with the money"that you would buy lego peices how does that help with learning about DNA?