WIKICOMMONS, EINSAMER SCHUTZE The interbreeding of Neanderthals and Denisovans with Homo sapiens resulted in advantageous Neanderthal-inherited alleles in the genomes of a diverse range of modern humans, according to genomicists. The team’s analysis, published today (November 10) in Current Biology, expands the number of loci in the human genome attributed to these ancient hominins. The results suggest that these alleles—mostly within immune and skin pigmentation genes—likely helped modern humans adapt to life outside of Africa.
“The study expands our knowledge of the extent to which Neanderthals and Denisovans contributed functionally relevant genetic variation to modern humans,” Svante Pääbo, an evolutionary geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, who was not involved in the work, wrote in an email to The Scientist. “It shows that the contribution [of hominin DNA] is substantial and is larger than I assumed when we first discovered that these extinct hominins had mixed with modern human ancestors.”
“The authors’ approach of rebuilding archaic genomes by mining the remnants from modern genomes is unique and brilliant,” wrote Paul Norman, a senior research scientist at Stanford University in California, in an email to The Scientist. “This study adds to the growing body of evidence ...
