Thursday, December 6, 2012

Genetic research confirms that non-Africans are part Neanderthal

Some of the human X chromosome originates from Neanderthals and is found exclusively in people outside Africa, according to an international team of researchers led by Damian Labuda of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center. The research was published in the July issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. Neanderthals, whose ancestors left Africa about 400,000 to 800,000 years ago, evolved in what is now mainly France, Spain, Germany and Russia, and are thought to have lived until about 30,000 years ago. Meanwhile, early modern humans left Africa about 80,000 to 50,000 years ago.

Dr. Labuda and his team almost a decade ago had identified a piece of DNA, called a haplotype, in the human X chromosome that seemed different and whose origins they questioned. When the Neanderthal genome was sequenced in 2010, they quickly compared 6000 chromosomes from all parts of the world to the Neanderthal haplotype. The Neanderthal sequence was present in peoples across all continents, except for sub-Saharan Africa, and including Australia. This is an interesting find, which hopefully will be used to determine a more specific path of lineage in our evolutionary chain.

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4 comments:

  1. farrelldDecember 6, 2012 at 3:12 PM

    At one point of the homo sapien lineage the neanderthals were still in existence. There isalways a possibility that interbreeding between the two species occurred, and recently found higher concentrations of neanderthal descendants in the French region where many remains of Neanderthals were found. It is a fascinating discovery!

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  2. dzialowskiDecember 11, 2012 at 10:01 AM

    I just learned about this topic in my Human evolution class, it is very interesting. Neanderthals were mainly found in Europe and the Middle East. They co existed with humans, and there is evidence that they did interbreed from time to time. Humans did not evolve from neanderthals, rather there were two distinct lineages. It has also been found that Europeans and Asians share up to 4% of the same DNA as Neanderthals, very interesting!

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  3. alimidgeDecember 12, 2012 at 11:07 AM

    Many have studied the relationship between homo sapiens and neanderthals. Although they may have evolved from separate distinct lineages, they did exist around the same time periods and in similar areas. It is highly likely that interbreeding between the two did occur. Sequencing the genome of a neanderthal, comparing it to modern homo sapiens, and finding that there are similarities that suggest interbreeding. This just further supports previous theories and makes one think, "How much neanderthal am I?!"

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  4. kaylafFebruary 10, 2013 at 12:43 PM

    I personally studied this subject in a paleobiology course that I completed in the last couple months. So many different forms of our ancestors lived at the same time and were barred by nothing but land. Because Africa was inaccessible to Neanderthals, they were unable to mate with any ancestors that lived on that continent. To date, Neanderthal fossils have not been found in Africa.

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