Neanderthals Leave Their Mark on Us
Carl Zimmer JAN. 29, 2014
Ever since the discovery in 2010 that Neanderthals interbred with the ancestors of living humans, scientists have been trying to determine how their DNA affects people today. Now two new studies have traced the history of Neanderthal DNA, and have pinpointed a number of genes that may have medical importance today.
Among the findings, the studies have found clues to the evolution of skin and fertility, as well as susceptibility to diseases like diabetes. More broadly, they show how the legacy of Neanderthals has endured 30,000 years after their extinction. “It’s something that everyone wanted to know,” said Laurent Excoffier, a geneticist at the University of Bern in Switzerland who was not involved in the research. Neanderthals, who became extinct about 30,000 years ago, were among the closest relatives of modern humans. They shared a common ancestor with us that lived about 600,000 years ago.
In the 1990s, researchers began finding fragments of Neanderthal DNA in fossils. By 2010 they had reconstructed most of the Neanderthal genome. When they compared it with the genomes of five living humans, they found similarities to small portions of the DNA in the Europeans and Asians. The researchers concluded that Neanderthals and modern humans must have interbred. Modern humans evolved in Africa and then expanded out into Asia and Europe, where Neanderthals lived. In a 2012 study, the researchers estimated that this interbreeding took place between 37,000 and 85,000 years ago.
Sir Paul A. Mellars, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the research, said the archaeological evidence suggested the opportunity for modern humans to mate with Neanderthals would have been common once they expanded out of Africa. “They’d be bumping into Neanderthals at every street corner,” he joked. The first draft of the Neanderthal genome was too rough to allow scientists to draw further conclusions. But recently, researchers sequenced a far more accurate genome from a Neanderthal toe bone.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/science/neanderthals-leave-their-mark-on-us.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
A reconstruction of a Neanderthal skeleton, right, with a modern human skeleton in the background. Frank Franklin II/Associated Press
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