Genome Data Suggests We Mixed With Neanderthals
Posted by Science Oxford on May 7, 2010 | comments
New research into the genome of the Neanderthal supports a theory that our ancestors had, to some degree, interbred with the Neanderthal people. The researchers have reported that they have decoded over 50% of the Neanderthal genome.
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Visit this page »Scientists are reporting that they have decoded more than half the Neanderthal genome, and that the data supports a theory that our ancestors interbred with Neanderthal people a little.
The scientists devised a draft genome sequence, or a list of the “letters” in a creature’s genetic code. These “letters” consist of molecular units called nucleotides that make up the DNA. An analysis of this sequence can reveal information about an organism’s ancestry.
Scientists used pill-sized samples of powder from three bones of Neanderthals, a stocky ancient breed of humans that co-existed wth ancestors of modern humans. The findings appear in the May 7 issue of the research journal Science.
The researchers, led by Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, compared the Neanderthal genome with genomes of five present-day humans.
The results also revealed various genes that are unique to modern people, the scientists said, including a handful of genes that spread rapidly among our species after we split from a common ancestor we shared with Neanderthals. Among these genes are three believed to affect mental and cognitive development; mutations in these genes are linked to conditions such as Down syndrome, schizophrenia and autism.
“For the first time we can now identify genetic features that set us apart from all other organisms, including our closest evolutionary relatives,” Neanderthals, said Pääbo. “This [work] really just hints at what genes one should now study, and I’m sure we and many other groups will be doing that.”
Neanderthals first appeared around 400,000 years ago, ranged across Europe and western Asia, and died out about 30,000 years ago. The draft Neanderthal genome sequence being reported represents about 60 percent of the genome; the data was worked out using bones found in a cave in Croatia.
Pääbo and colleagues also sequenced the genomes of five present-day humans from southern Africa, West Africa, Papua New Guinea, China and France, to compare with the Neanderthal genome.
The Neanderthal genome proved slightly more similar to those of the non-African people than Africans, said the investigators. One of the simplest scenarios to explain this and some previous data, they added, is that after modern humans migrated out of Africa, they encountered and interbred with Neanderthals in the Middle East. The hanky-panky seems to have been fairly limited, judging from the extent of the similarities, but “it’s cool to think that some of us have a little Neanderthal DNA in us,” Pääbo said.
Article Credit: World Science
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