Researchers Probe Links Between Modern Humans and Neanderthals
Which genes make us uniquely human? Scientists are looking at DNA in old bones to find out. The focus now is not so much on our own species, Homo sapiens. Instead, scientists are probing DNA in well-preserved pieces of bone from our closest extinct relative, the Neanderthal.
Homo neanderthalensis nearly made it through two Ice Ages in Europe, only to disappear roughly 30,000 years ago. That’s about 15,000 years after our own ancestors arrived and settled the continent. For most of our own species’ time on Earth, Neanderthals were around, too. Some people even suspect that our own ancestors did them in.
Many wonder if there was interbreeding. Might some of us have a few distinctly Neanderthal genes?
Richard “Ed” Green, PhD, studies Neanderthal DNA at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Green is part of a lab team headed by Svante Pääbo, a Swedish scientist internationally renowned for studies of Neanderthal genes. Green visited UCSF’s Mission Bay campus in late July and gave a seminar talk highlighting the lab team’s recent discoveries.
You Say Neandertal, I Say Neanderthal
English speakers favor the term Neanderthal, but Germans and many scientists refer to these ancients as Neandertals, according to Green, whose talk was titled “Recent Human Evolution as Revealed by the Neandertal Genome.”
To make genetic comparisons with modern humans, researchers previously mapped the genome of the chimpanzee, the living species to which we are most closely related. Projects also are underway to obtain complete genetic maps for the gorilla and orangutan.
“We would like to be able to map the things that are genetically unique about humans to the behavioral and physiological differences between humans and chimpanzees,” Green says. “But because there are so many genetic and biological differences, it’s hard to make this map.”
In evolutionary terms, it is estimated that human ancestors and chimp ancestors went their separate ways about 5 million or 6 million years ago. Green says this date is “highly contentious.” The debate is informed by the fossil record, and now by comparisons of DNA sequences among species. The measurement of the accumulation of changes in the genetic code serves as a kind of evolutionary timekeeper.
Read entire article at Physorg.com
Homo neanderthalensis nearly made it through two Ice Ages in Europe, only to disappear roughly 30,000 years ago. That’s about 15,000 years after our own ancestors arrived and settled the continent. For most of our own species’ time on Earth, Neanderthals were around, too. Some people even suspect that our own ancestors did them in.
Many wonder if there was interbreeding. Might some of us have a few distinctly Neanderthal genes?
Richard “Ed” Green, PhD, studies Neanderthal DNA at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Green is part of a lab team headed by Svante Pääbo, a Swedish scientist internationally renowned for studies of Neanderthal genes. Green visited UCSF’s Mission Bay campus in late July and gave a seminar talk highlighting the lab team’s recent discoveries.
You Say Neandertal, I Say Neanderthal
English speakers favor the term Neanderthal, but Germans and many scientists refer to these ancients as Neandertals, according to Green, whose talk was titled “Recent Human Evolution as Revealed by the Neandertal Genome.”
To make genetic comparisons with modern humans, researchers previously mapped the genome of the chimpanzee, the living species to which we are most closely related. Projects also are underway to obtain complete genetic maps for the gorilla and orangutan.
“We would like to be able to map the things that are genetically unique about humans to the behavioral and physiological differences between humans and chimpanzees,” Green says. “But because there are so many genetic and biological differences, it’s hard to make this map.”
In evolutionary terms, it is estimated that human ancestors and chimp ancestors went their separate ways about 5 million or 6 million years ago. Green says this date is “highly contentious.” The debate is informed by the fossil record, and now by comparisons of DNA sequences among species. The measurement of the accumulation of changes in the genetic code serves as a kind of evolutionary timekeeper.