Slashdot Mirror
Deciphering the DNA Code of Neanderthal Man
smooth wombat writes "U.S. and German scientists have embarked on a two-year long project to map the genetic code of Neanderthal man. Their hope is to gain a greater understanding of how modern human brains evolved. This study comes after last years completion of mapping the DNA of chimpanzees, our closest living relative." From the article: "Over two years, the scientists aim to reconstruct a draft of the 3 billion building blocks of the Neanderthal genome -- working with fossil samples from several individuals. They face the complication of working with 40,000-year-old samples, and of filtering out microbial DNA that contaminated them after death. Only about 5 percent of the DNA in the samples is actually Neanderthal DNA, Egholm estimated, but he and Rothberg said pilot experiments had convinced them that the decoding was feasible."
This link, "Announcing a two year Neandertal genome decoding project" links to several science blogger's take on this anouncement including a definited Neandertal sequencing post by John Hawks.
Anthropology.net - Beyond bones and stones.
Don't laugh. Richard Dawkins predicts that "the missing link" will be born by the middle of this century. He has an essay on this in a book titled "The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-first Century". This is an interesting book consisting of 25 speculative essays by leading scientists in various fields.
Dawkins' argument is that Moore's Law will eventually make the sequencing of genomes cheap enough to be routine. He speculates that a large database of hominid genomes plus expected advances in gene manipulation would support the creation of pre-human DNA. Once this is done, an implanted embryo with the new DNA could be inserted into a human womb, and out pops the new (old?) species. If Dawkins is correct, then other non-human species such as Neanderthals are also potentially viable.
In the essay, Dawkins briefly discusses the moral implications of such a task. He concludes that any objections are easily overcome by the great service to mankind in proving the correctness of the Theory of Evolution.