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20% of Neanderthal Genome Survives In Humans
vinces99 writes "A substantial fraction of the Neanderthal genome persists in modern human populations. A new analysis (abstract) of 665 people from Europe and East Asia shows that more than 20 percent of the Neanderthal genome survives in the DNA of this contemporary group, whose genetic information is part of the 1,000 Genomes Project."
Another study published today (abstract) finds that Neanderthal genes are present in some parts of our genome that we've found to be important. Some of the genes influence fertility and skin pigment, and others actually increase our susceptibility to diseases like diabetes and lupus. The researchers are now taking these known genetic markers and seeing if they correlate with any other health conditions.
You replicate those genes by 3d printing, and offer them for bitcoins, and that's how you end up on slashdot.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I'm surprised it's not higher.
Fitting article for SuperBowl week.
Table-ized A.I.
In some more than in others. ;)
I may be 20% neanderthal, but I'm statistically 0.5% Genghis Khan...
I'm 3.2% according to 23andme.
These genes do not exist in humanity in general, only specific racial groups. They are completely absent from African populations. Similar to milk digestion. Being able to digest milk in adulthood is a feature found almost only in European race populations, because it is allowed by a genetic mutation that occured in these populations 10,000 years ago. Most other racial groups are lactose intolerant after early childhood. Milk digestion in adulthood is certainly a huge advantage and became much favored with cattle domestication in Europe.
The insertion of neanderthal genes happened around 30,000 years ago immediately after early humans left africa, after that there were 30,000 years of divergent evolution and branching that gave us the geographically distinct racial groups.
Neanderthals are barely a separate species.
They're homo neanderthalensis, while modern man is homo sapiens sapiens. The immediate predecessor to modern humans is homo sapiens idaltu, which is minutely different than us. While a simple majority of paleontologists classify Neanderthals as a separate species, there's a significant minority that advocate them as merely another subspecies (home sapiens neanderthalensis) being more correct.
Given that the ENTIRE Neanderthal genome differs from ours by 0.15% or less (we're about 2% different than our closest modern primate relative), I'm very surprised that the Homo-specific genome part is only 20% in common between Neanderthal and Modern Human. Particularly since it's now commonly accepted that they interbred with modern humans.
I think the 20% commonality (if it bears out) probably reinforces the "separate species" theory more than the "distinct subspecies" theory of the Homo genus family tree.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
I've always found the neanderthal theory of autism interesting. Like, I know there's little to no actual evidence, but I can totally see it happening!
What I find interesting is the only group that doesn't have Neanderthal genes are Africans. It almost sounds like Caucasians got their light skin and ability to handle the cold from Neanderthals and are hybrids while Africans are the only pure humans. Ironic.
From God's Roadmap:
Beta
Release version: Homo neanderthalensis
Build name: Adam
Release date: 4,569,770,000 years after cooling
Deprecated: 4,569,971,000 years after cooling
Stable
Release version: Homo sapiens
Build name: Eve
Release date: 4,569,800,000 years after cooling
Deprecated:
[Sigh] Still deciding. I mean, the codebase is starting to look a bit creaky in a few places, and they're starting to tinker with it themselves (they think it's open source - hah!). Inquisitive little so-and-so's can't leave well enough alone... They've noticed the legacy code from the previous build too - ick, some cruft in there. Very tempting to trash the lot and start again using AOP. Mind you I mightn't have to lift a finger if they don't stop blowing each other to smithereens.
[sigh] TODO: Take oort cloud inventory - look for something nice and big...
There's no such thing as more primitive in a genetic sense which makes it ridiculous in both cases. Anything alive today is the result of all the evolution that has taken place since the first bits of life and is therefore equally evolved.
GIven that neanderthals were the pale-skinned ones, that's probably a good bet. We can only hope that he does all he can to prevent his own shameful neanderthal genes from being propagated to future generations.
And thank you for following Skitt's Law.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Also, 20% is a lot, so we might as well call it human DNA. We own it now, its shapes us.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
For instance an average European has an average IQ of 105 compared to 70 in Africa. Though, the higher IQ is likely due to divergent racial evolution that occured well after the insertion of neanderthal genes...
Or it could be a matter of education, relative stress in childhood, and diet. Or it could be a matter of a cultural upbringing that doesn't value and train people in the types of reasoning favored by IQ tests. I'd like to see a test cataloging our relative abilities to navigate vast terrain, to remember and recite oral histories, to perform pattern recognition based on ability to identify wild plants, or just a simple ability to navigate complex social situations, for example. Or it could be a function of languages, since we already know that languages can affect things like the ability to recognize and categorize colors.
Have you ever read letters from American Civil War soldiers to their families back home? We're not talking a college education demographic by a long shot, but the eloquence and care of language in these letters is often breathtaking. Are we "dumber" than them as a populace for not being able to write like an average farm boy could 150 years ago? Or are we just trained for different uses of our brains.
IQ is a crappy measure of genetic superiority, because it fails to account for environment & upbringing, and it's heavily biased towards one particular culture's most valued intelligence traits.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Not that I disagree but it's worth pointing out that the summary is a bit misleading. Europeans share these genes but africans do not and it's 20% of the .15% of the neaderthal genome that is distinct, obviously humans share a lot more than 20% of their DNA with neaderthals, we share a lot more than that with primates!
Not entirely. Evolution is most meaningfully measured in generations, not years. Those species that have averaged a more rapid average reproductive cycle since their ancestors parted ways with ours will have undergone more evolutionary iterations than us. Mice are in the lead pack among mammals. And bacteria leave even mice in the dust, even before you factor in the fact that for them sex is more like performing limited genetic engineering on themselves, allowing useful mutations to spread through the population without any reproduction occurring. Granted they also lack the chaotic genetic roulette of sexual reproduction that the "higher" organisms benefit from, so their average evolution/generation is probably somewhat different than ours.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I think they're referring to the section of our DNA which is specific to the Homo genus.
That is, DNA for the Homo genus is probably about 99.5% or more in common, across all species of Homo. You can tell where the Homo DNA starts by comparing it to other members of the subfamily Homininae, and looking for differences.
So, in the Homo-specific portions of our DNA, TFA is claiming that 20% or so is common to modern humans and Neanderthals. That still seems low, given the interbreeding of Neanderthal and Modern Humans, and the fact we both share a direct common ancestor.
Wheel of Unfortune
Table-ized A.I.
I wonder what other groups of primates we share DNA with that we know nothing about?
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
For a good long time, anatomically modern humans didn't make cave paintings and jewelry either, at least not often enough to be detected. Nobody knows what triggered the use of art in humans.
The best theory I've heard is it's not that humans became smarter, but rather more social. Neanderthal brains were big if not bigger than ours, so they were potentially pretty smart. However, they may have been relatively anti-social.
The most successful humans were probably those who used trade to get the resources their area lacked. For example, your area may have good arrow-head rocks, but not a lot of prey during the dry season. If you encounter another tribe whose area has a lot of prey but poor rocks, you can trade rocks for meat, and both groups benefit and give birth to more traders instead of making war with neighbors.
Normally mammals battle neighboring groups because they compete with resources, so trade requires a different mentality: socializing with strangers. It may have taken several thousands of years to evolve this tendency. (Slashdotters are still working on it :-)
Neanderthals may just have been slower to take advantage of trade. This is possibly because the human population was greater, magnifying the benefits of trade.
Cave paintings and jewelry may have been an early form of advertising of your goods and services, and serving as social gestures of good will.
Table-ized A.I.
...which is why, son, your dink
is neanderthal pink.
--flop
Nothing posted to
The article clearly indicates that the male offspring of Human-Neanderthal breedings might have had lower fertility or been sterile (because modern humans share very few sperm producing genes from Neanderthals). Hence it is far more likely that, Neanderthal males simply bred themselves out of existence by mating with human females, and the Neanderthalish male offispring of male Human to female Neanderthal matings never went anywhere. Thus the decreasing male Neanderthal ratio would force further matings of Neanderthal females with human males. Thus resulting in an eventual complete loss of male Neanderthals, and ever decreasing purity of Neanderthal females. Mystery solved.
In fact, 20% survive in Arnold Schwarzenegger alone. Add the National Football League, WWE Wrestling, and the Texas State Board of Education, and you've probably got well above 90%.
The amount of change caused by evolution is most meaningfully measured in generations, the rate at which generations occur is itself the product of evolution. More is simply more, not necessarily better.
That we now nothing about? Obviously I don't know. But we share 96% of our DNA with chimps. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0831_050831_chimp_genes.html
We all descended from aliens anyway.
Have gnu, will travel.
Primitive in the genetic sense means that it contains lots of DNA that's been around for a very long time, rather than DNA which has come into existence more recently.
Selection pressure is not uniform across all life forms, therefore, there can be more or less evolving going on at different times, locations, species, etc.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
actually i think it was designed to predict how well someone would do in the military, as the army were the originators of these tests and they used them when recruiting and tasking soldiers.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
In India I think it's 80%. With a population of 1.25 Billion who have an avg IQ of 79, it just can't be 20%.
It's true. The cows we have today aren't more advanced than yesterday's cows, but rather today's cows are groomed towards the goal of a higher quality hamburger. And these cows are therefore probably less capable and less advanced than cows from 100 years ago.
Evolution doesn't have a goal, it is a drift towards survivability and therefore reproduction in the current status quo.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Since we are pimates, we share 100% of our genome with primates.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Neanderthals were most probably smarter. The theory is that they lived in small groups while our migrating ancestors lived in packs/tribes in larger numbers and until there was proof many people thought that they died off and were probably overrun. It was controversial to claim they bred until there was proof (but it's rather obvious if you think about it, people will screw anything - there is no way they wouldn't; no religion to stop them.)
India has a lot of poor uneducated people. If you lived and grew up like many of them did you'd be no smarter on a standardized IQ test.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
We share 40% of our DNA with grass.
You may be interested to know that pale skin genes appeared in the European genome only as recently as 6000-12000 years ago. Or maybe not, as it seems you do not want your opinions messed with by fact.
Interestingly, as Homo sapiens appeared in Europe 40 000 years ago or longer, the thinking is that pale skin should have evolved much sooner to enable vitamin D synthesis from the lower UV levels found there.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Somebody mod up. This explanation makes much more sense than the bullshit racist competition of euro-centrists and afro-centrists we see so much of in this debate.Quantitative difference != qualitative difference.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Ah. Now that neanderthal comment makes sense. I've been getting from time to time.
Considering that humans and chimps have over 95% identical genes, and the same is true for humans and gorillas and chims and gorillas I would assume neanderthals and modern humans have also about 95% - 99% common genes.
Where does this stupid 20% come from?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
This would seem contrary to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/scie...
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Aside from Neanderthals and Denisovians, which we know about, at least one more group of genes in Central Asian peoples comes from an "unknown" hominid for which we have no genetic samples. I'll skip the obvious joke about Homo Erectus.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
You don't seem to understand modern genetic research.
Only those of Sub Saharan African descent, i.e. blacks, are purely homospaiens.
All other people on earth are essentially a hybrid of homosapiens and neanderthals.
Mainstream "science" sources, generally shy away from genetics because they are beholden to the myth of "equality' and deny the existence of human breeds.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Of course quantitative differences result in qualitative differences. What do you think the purpose of DNA is? To prove in your fantasy of equality?
The stuff creates differences. Every mutation is a difference, which in time becomes either a new breed, or a new species.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Do we know that for sure? The linked article requires a subscription, but if it is the same as this story then it was based on an analysis of the DNA of a single individual from circa 5000BC, who was closely related to northern Europeans but was living in Spain. There are many interpretations one could make from that: that all Europeans were similar to this man, that this guy was of mixed parentage and was relatively unique, that he belonged to a splinter population that got wiped out... I am sure there are many other plausible hypotheses. At the end of the day, you are trying to make a guess about the entire population of Europe from a sample size of one individual near Europe's borders. Was this some other study, and if so can you provide some details please?
I note the term "suggests" in the article, which translates as "someone's wishful thinking supported mainly by squinting at the evidence". And where's the rule that a given mutation can't arise multiple times??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
True, but we share a lot more than 20% our DNA with OTHER primates.
I saw one, mopping the floor in building 2 at MIT in 1994. I shit you not.
I consider amount of time that evolution has been doing it's job to be the only significant factor. There is nothing to say that having short lifespans and changing more rapidly is a superior result. Nor is having a larger gene pool. These things are simply the products of different branches that evolution is working down in it's massively parallel processing alongside natural selection.
Simple organisms like bacteria evolve genetically in a rapid fashion due to short lifespan whereas very complex organisms like humans have evolved complex mechanisms to allow them to dynamically respond to and overcome most selection pressures during their lifetime. The two are marrying quickly as complex organisms like humans are gaining the capability to use their dynamic response capabilities (sentience, intelligence, tool usage) to augment their own genetic code and steal from the genetic code of other organisms.
And anyone who things "more evolved" = "better" fundamentally misunderstands the nature of evolution. "More evolved" is more akin to "traveled further", but along a drunkards walk, much of which may not be relevant to current demands on the species.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.