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Oldest Human DNA Contains Clues To Mysterious Species
sciencehabit writes "Analysis of the oldest known genetic material ever to be recovered from an early human reveals an unexpected chapter in the story of human evolution. Researchers extracted mitochondrial DNA from the femur of a 400,000-year-old hominin found in the Sima de los Huesos ('pit of bones'), an underground cave in the Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain. Because the early hominins looked a little like Neanderthals, researchers expected their mitochondrial DNA to share a common ancestor. However, mitochondrial DNA from the Spanish hominin was found to share a common ancestor with an enigmatic eastern Eurasian sister group to the Neanderthals, the Denisovans."
Thank you for being a friend
Traveled down the road and back again
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a cosmonaut.
And if you threw a party
Invited everyone you knew
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
And the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend.
Bitches!
OK, OK, still better than Kardashians, I guess.
1. They had problems with modern human DNA contamination (not sure why they couldn't get everything clean but since they're the leading edge lab in this sort of thing, it must be a real issue).
2. They had to limit analysis to fragment lengths around 45 base pairs to avoid this contamination. That's tiny compared to what one normally uses.
3. They only had enough to sequence the mitochondrial DNA.
4. It's only one person.
So, it's confusing but it seems from the outside to be due to a limited data set. Now, this sort of thing is at the limit of our current technology and the lab is working to replicate and amplify the data (and work on the somatic genome). So stay confused and stay tuned.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
film at 11...
sounds like this "journalist" never even heard of Denisovans before now. So what exactly is the "clues" that have been gained?
"400,000-year-old hominin"
I thought they were hominids
That's from the maternal line. It's the DNA that's directly passed down only from the mother. Just because no maternal Neanderthals DNA is present doesn't mean there isn't Neanderthals DNA present from Neanderthal fathers. I'm not arguing that this is the answer, only that the findings above don't prohibit this from being true.
Besides, we all know those Neanderthals mean were the one's hitting our ancestral women on the heads, dragging them back their caves, and spreading their DNA. :P
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
But it was aliens.
"underground cave" is there another kind?
OS I do, becaus3 lea7ing the play
The earth is and has been an experiment for a superior race who have been
watching us to see whether we would make the same mistakes they made.
If you think this is not true, just wait and see.
Planet Earth was like a mega eco-laboratory for them, and homo sapiens were a product of their genetic engineering, whom they had infused their own genetic material into certain original natives of the planet. You will never find the evolutionary 'missing link' from primates because the genetic lineage of humans had been deliberately truncated from those ape cousins.
Major religions which had alluded to gods or angels were far more on point that we give them credit for.
I've got a steaming hot fresh turd for the twerp who modded the above post down to
eat.
Step right up, you know you are hungry, and you know that shit is what you
deserve to eat.
That was me. Please give me your address so I can pick up the turd.
From http://genetics.med.harvard.edu/reich/Reich_Lab/Welcome_files/2012_Science_Meyer_DenisovaSeq.pdf
"To visualize the relationship between Denisova and the eleven present-day humans, we used Tree-Mix, which simultaneously infers a tree of relationships and migration events”. This method estimates that 6.0% of the genomes of present-day Papuans derive from Denisovans. While this procedure does not provide a perfect fit to the data (for example, it does not model Neandertal admixture), it agrees with our previous finding that Denisovans have contributed to the genomes of present-day Melanesians, Australian Aborigines, and other South-East Asian islanders"
Ouch. Ok. So, here are the images of your Denisovans?
http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/papuan
http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/aboriginals
They look so kind! But, let us pray WWF and Greepeace doesn't get too involved in this. Or, in other words, How un-pc can this untangling get?
Which is why we are NEVER allowed to show a picture of a gorilla next to a picture of a black man. Why is that?
We all know aliens have a problem with abducting and then "probing" farm animals and humans - we probably inherited some of that behavior from them... (some of us more than others.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
They could have taken many samples of this one person to verify it's actually the true RNA. Given enough samples, you'd statistically eliminate the deterioration and contamination of individual samples quite drastically. You most certainly wouldn't be able to come up with the definitive complete RNA or DNA of this person, but the margin for error would be so low that even the most sceptical peer reviewer would be convinced.
Contamination would most likely be limited to recent events. Ancient people peeing in the corner would have left a little DNA/RNA, but that would be limited to single cells on or near the surface, not being protected by bone structure or surrounding cells. The chance of that DNA/RNA surviving is way lower than the DNA/RNA inside the bones, so most likely, we're only dealing with the handling of the bones since the 1980s.
Yes, this one person could still be a freak occurrence. However, if you were to see that as a valid argument, our entire theory of the origin of modern humans is based on a few freak occurrences we just happen to have found scattered around the planet.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
... not "pit of bones".
"el"/"la"/"los"/"las" == "the".
Omitting it in English when there is a "el/la/los/las" in Spanish is not optional. Don't do it.
Adding a "el/la/los/las" in Spanish when there is no "the" in English is wrong aswell.
In lots of American movies and TV shows I see this mistake over and over.
i.e. In a Simpons episode we see the Bumblebee Man with a paper that says "El Divorcio". Why adding "El" here?. It's just "Divorcio".
You probably see the article added to every word in Spanish class, but that's just so you can learn the word genre (masculine/femenine) and so you can use the correct article _if_ needed. Stop this nonsense please.
Humans have always shagged anything that was on two legs. Its not surprising that there's a lot of cross-sharing of DNA material between the various Homo branches. Its just that thanks to our superior societal norms, that we're more uptight about the fact than Bonobono chimps are......
Thank God for that?
Hmmmm....
It's generally accepted that human beings (homo sapiens) are no more than 200,000 years old. So unless the researchers are proposing their data shows that humans are a lot older than originally thought, the title and summary are flawed. Not that the research isn't interesting, but one would hope that scientists would know the difference between the species involved and not misinform the public.
Livid evil elvis genetic lost twin.
let's do this more...
if we must suffer AC trolls getting 'firsties' we can at least make lemons into lemonade & collectively mock all AC's...
Thank you Dave Raggett
Stop it right now. You are making me homorny!
Sometimes coffee tastes muddy if it is overground and the smaller particles make it through the filter
I prefer underground coffee where the grinds are fairly large chunks
*runs*