Sunday, February 26, 2012

Humans are part Neanderthal

Scientists at the University of Montreal have discovered that humans have a small part of the X chromosome that was once carried by Neanderthals. Their findings are published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. Leading scientist, Damian Labuda, says that interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans occurred between 30,000 - 50,000 years ago. Labuda found evidence of this idea about ten years ago, but wasn't completely sure until the Neanderthal genome was released in 2010. When comparing the modern human X chromosome to the Neanderthal X chromosome Labuda found that they shared DNA in all populations except sub-Saharan African. The related gene between modern humans and Neanderthals only codes for a protein, but this could be the first step in finding more similar DNA. The most important idea to come from this research is that this is proof that not only did Homo sapiens interact with Neanderthals, but they most certainly interbred.

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