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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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« There is no one simple evolution story | Main | Oh, crap. »

More on the Neandertal genome

Category: Evolution
Posted on: February 18, 2009 9:39 AM, by PZ Myers

When a milestone in the Neandertal genome project was announced last week, I was a little underwhelmed. Too much PR and too little information, I thought. Anyway, John Hawks has a summary, and if it's a little thin on specifics right now, at least he does a better job of explaining why this work is potentially very exciting.

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Comments

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | February 18, 2009 10:11 AM

I liked Hawk's explanations. He explained why the media was alerted (three billion base pairs sequenced targeted for media coverage, 3.7 billion at the announcement), and showed that there is still a lot of work to do. I can't wait to see the whole genome sequenced.

Posted by: Kevpod | February 18, 2009 10:17 AM

Neanderal.

A rare typo.

Posted by: Quiet_Desperation | February 18, 2009 10:24 AM

I only have one question about cloning them.

1. Can they cook?
2. Do they do windows?

OK, two questions.

Just don't teach them to talk. We'll just wind up with the Planet Of The Apes scenario. Except with Neandertals. And without Charlton Heston returning from space and causing a time loop because our space program sucks. But then again it was an ape from the future who caused the problem in the first place, so maybe that's OK.

Oh, wait!

3. How are they with gardening?

Posted by: Craig | February 18, 2009 10:30 AM

Hey PZ, Pharyngulites,

The NODAKS need your help. Yesterday, the ND legislature passed a bill that would define life beginning at conception--the moment an egg is fertilized. As one lawmaker put it "if it has one living human cell it is a person."

http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/231419/

Please lend your considerable knowledge and proactive support to this pressing issue. Not all of us want to be sucked into the dark ages.

Thanks!

Posted by: Marc Abian | February 18, 2009 11:12 AM

But what's the point of even sequencing some stupid old genome?

Just kidding...

Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 18, 2009 11:18 AM

Not much new on the importance. Is anyone really serious about cloning, other than if we get another Stalin, or the like, to command it?

I am glad to hear that the contamination problem has been so successfully addressed.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592

Posted by: Joe | February 18, 2009 11:24 AM

I was hoping someone could explain something to me. If, as Hawks says, it is clear that foxp2 did introgress, how does Paabo know that there was no interbreeding between sapiens and neandertals? What does he look at to come to this conclusion. Also, if they could interbreed, why does that not imply they are the same species? There was a great NG special not that long ago on "Neanderthal Code" which did imply interbreeding. Was that program wrong? Thanks.

Posted by: Nangleator | February 18, 2009 12:12 PM

#3, what's wrong with a Planet of the Apes scenario? If all the women are pretty and wearing tiny rags or bits of fur, and they can't talk... Who's with me here?

Sure, there are beatings and there's slavery and damned dirty paws and nets and brain surgery experiments... But just remember what Nova looked like. I could share a cage with some other slaves like that.

Posted by: ndt | February 18, 2009 12:20 PM

There's a typo in the first paragraph, PZ. You typed Neanderal instead of Neandertal.

I'm a traditionalist myself, and prefer Neanderthal. It turns out the Firefox spell-checker does too.

#10

Posted by: Les Lane | February 18, 2009 12:22 PM

Paabo's talk (RealVideo) at the AAAS is available here:
http://www.aaas.org/meetings/2009/program/lectures/

I found it vastly more interesting that newspaper and newsmag summaries.

#11

Posted by: raven | February 18, 2009 12:38 PM

wikipedia:
At roughly 3.2 billion base pairs,[1] the Neanderthal genome is about the size of the modern human genome; according to preliminary sequences, modern human and Neanderthal DNA appear to be 99.5% identical (compared to humans sharing around 95% of their genes with the chimpanzee and 99.5% variation between modern humans, according to the latest data).

One of the more interesting things to come out. The Neanderthals genome is 99.5% identical to modern humans.

Any two humans can be similar to 99.5%.

So any two modern human or Neanderthals differ by or up to 0.5%

Not too sure what this means. But it does seem to indicate that they were closely related to extant humans.

Still a lot of work to do here. The best comparisons would be between ancient upper paleolithic humans and Neanderthals. Comparing modern humans to 30,000 year old Neanderthals might be a bit apples to oranges. Some researchers claim that the sequence shows interbreeding, others that it doesn't. Need more data and analysis here.

It would also be interesting to get some sequence from H. floriensis. I've heard they tried without much success.

#12

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | February 18, 2009 12:48 PM

Also, if they could interbreed, why does that not imply they are the same species?

Under two of the at least 25 species concepts, it does. Under the others, it does not. Pick and choose as you feel like.

I'm a traditionalist myself, and prefer Neanderthal.

That h in there was not only completely pointless, it was also abolished no later than 1901…

H. floriensis

H. floresiensis, strangely enough.

#13

Posted by: Anon | February 18, 2009 12:53 PM

There's a man in the genome project we all know
(Alley-Oop, oop, oop, oop-oop)
He lives 'way back a long time ago
(Alley-Oop, oop, oop, oop-oop)
He may drag knuckles, but he doesn't crawl
(Alley-Oop, oop, oop, oop-oop)
Well, this cat's name is-a Neandertal
(Alley-Oop, oop, oop, oop-oop)

...

#14

Posted by: Sigmund | February 18, 2009 1:09 PM

"If, as Hawks says, it is clear that foxp2 did introgress, how does Paabo know that there was no interbreeding between sapiens and neandertals?"
I believe one hypothesis was that if interbreeding took place then some neanderthal genome may be present in modern populations - most likely in populations that met the neanderthals in europe or the middle east.
The genome result shows no greater similarity between the neanderthal genome and either european or african genomes - a point against the interbreeding theory.
One piece of possibly confirmatory evidence was whether the Microcephalin allele that seems to have introgressed into the modern non African population was present in neanderthals - the data shows it was not - another point against interbreeding.
This doesnt mean that no interbreeding occurred (some skeletal remains look like this may indeed have occurred) however it is looking more likely that none of these interbred individuals have bequeathed neanderthal DNA to modern humans - possibly due to replacement of both the neanderthals and the neanderthal-human hybrids by succeeding immigrants to europe.
Still, there's about 37% of the genome left to sequence so theres still a chance that we will identify some genes that appear neanderthal derived but so far the data points against it.

#15

Posted by: Greg Laden | February 18, 2009 2:01 PM

I've been very confident that they have it and that it is good data. Svante was here not too long ago for the Nobel and let out enough info to make it clear that this was a real thing.

#16

Posted by: Quiet_Desperation | February 18, 2009 2:45 PM

Alley-Oop, oop, oop, oop-oop)

Hey Maw! Grandpa's online again!

#17

Posted by: frog | February 18, 2009 3:40 PM

Joe: Also, if they could interbreed, why does that not imply they are the same species?

Wasn't there a science paper from 3 or 4 years ago showing evidence of gene flow between proto-chimp and proto-human species until about 2 million years ago when we had a chromosome inversion and split?

Different species can and do interbreed. It's just that the rate is low. The "species is a separate gene pool" definition is just an entry to the concept -- but reality is always much fuzzier than what can fit in a textbook.

If that weren't the case, how could new species arise?

#18

Posted by: Joe | February 18, 2009 5:27 PM

Thanks to #14 and #17 for the comments. I think I'm beginning to understand this better. I agree with #10 -- Paabo's talk is very illuminating. One thing I was confused about were previous reports of foxp2 being the result of introgression. If you look at John Hawks website he states, "It seems very likely that Neandertals got the language gene from us, or us from them, long after many other genes in the two populations diverged." But if you watch Paabo starting at 38:20 in the video, he makes it clear that modern foxp2 came before the split between sapiens and neandertals. Is that a fairly solid conclusion now? This also means that the NG special on "Neanderthal code" was misleading.

#19

Posted by: frog | February 18, 2009 6:59 PM

Sigmund: possibly due to replacement of both the neanderthals and the neanderthal-human hybrids by succeeding immigrants to europe.

Or simple population dynamics. We know that there were few neanderthals, and that "modern" populations lived at a higher density; ergo, with perfectly random breeding and the probability of death, it shouldn't take long for the genome associated with the high density population to just swamp out the low density-associated genome.

Just as if there was a population composed of 98 Joneses and 2 Smiths -- it shouldn't take many generations for 100% of the population to be Joneses.

#20

Posted by: ndt | February 18, 2009 8:18 PM

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | February 18, 2009 12:48 PM

I'm a traditionalist myself, and prefer Neanderthal.
That h in there was not only completely pointless, it was also abolished no later than 1901…

Pointless, my ass. That "h" tells you that at some time in the past, the German language had an aspirated unvoiced alveolar stop.

To a fan of historical linguistics like myself, 1901 is practically the day before yesterda.

#21

Posted by: ndt | February 18, 2009 8:22 PM

Blockquote fail. Let me try that again:

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | February 18, 2009 12:48 PM
I'm a traditionalist myself, and prefer Neanderthal.
That h in there was not only completely pointless, it was also abolished no later than 1901…

Pointless, my ass. That "h" tells you that at some time in the past, the German language had an aspirated unvoiced alveolar stop.

To a fan of historical linguistics like myself, 1901 is practically the day before yesterday.

#22

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | February 18, 2009 8:27 PM

H. floresiensis, strangely enough.

What's strange is the extra 'i' in there--it's from Flores, so why not floresensis?

#23

Posted by: Sigmund | February 18, 2009 9:06 PM

"One thing I was confused about were previous reports of foxp2 being the result of introgression. "
Joe,
I think you are mixing up two stories here. It was Microcephalin, not FoxP2 that was suspected of being of neanderthal origin and then introgressing into the non african human population.
All humans have the Foxp2 allele - the question this study answers is whether it is an old allele, also present in neanderthals, or a new mutation that gave modern humans the ability to use language. It looks like the neanderthals also had the same FoxP2 as us - so perhaps they had a similar ability in language.
Frog
"Just as if there was a population composed of 98 Joneses and 2 Smiths -- it shouldn't take many generations for 100% of the population to be Joneses."
I agree, but the question the study addressed was whether some particularly advantageous neanderthal alleles had managed to survive in modern europeans- looks like they haven't.

#24

Posted by: frog | February 18, 2009 9:44 PM

Sigmund:

Isn't more likely that some completely irrelevant, neutral mutations would have survived -- under those conditions where you just had a swamping? You wouldn't really be driven by selection then, since the threshold for selection would be much too high for it to be effective.

Which would mean the best place to look is exactly in those places which you wouldn't be interested in looking, and aren't even terribly aware of among modern humans.

#25

Posted by: Joe | February 18, 2009 11:41 PM

Sigmund
If you check PZ's original post, it's a link to John Hawks' site. There you can find his write-up on introgression of foxp2, whether neandertal to sapien or vice-versa. He bases his opinion on Coop et al who estimates the foxp2 sweep in humans as 42,000 years ago. I was pointing out that Paabo pushes that time much further back. Basically, Paabo and Hawks disagree on this. It makes it all that more interesting to see how this gets resolved.

#26

Posted by: Sigmund | February 19, 2009 6:38 AM

Joe, he did specifically write about the data that may falsify Bruce Lahn's microcephalin introgression hypothesis.
"According to the press conference, the human-derived allele of MCPH1 was not found in the Vindija sequence. Bruce Lahn and colleagues had suggested that this allele might have come into the recent human population from Neandertals, based on its present pattern of variability. This allele is quite divergent from the rest of human variation at the locus, it is common outside of Africa but rare inside of Africa, and it appears to have been under positive natural selection for around 30,000 years."

#27

Posted by: ulrich nusbaum story | February 19, 2009 6:54 AM

Euro geht langsam

von Raivo Pommer

Ulrich Nußbaum wird neuer Finanzsenator

Der frühere Bremer Finanzsenator Ulrich Nußbaum (parteilos) wird neuer Finanzsenator in Berlin. Das gab der Regierende Bürgermeister Klaus Wowereit (SPD) bekannt. Der 51 Jahre alte Jurist war von 2003 bis 2007 Finanzsenator in Bremen. Er war außerdem als Rechtsanwalt tätig und ist Vizepräsident der Handelskammer Bremerhaven. Er folgt Thilo Sarrazin nach, der zum 1. Mai in den Vorstand der Bundesbank in Frankfurt/Main wechselt.

Sarrazin war sieben Jahre Finanzsenator in Berlin. Der Regierende Bürgermeister Wowereit sagte, Nußbaum kenne sichals früherer Finanzsenator von Bremen mit Problemen wie Verschuldungund Länderfinanzausgleich bestens aus.

#28

Posted by: Alan Kellogg | February 19, 2009 10:07 PM

On that 99.5% match up: It's not how much the genomes differ but how the genomes differ.

On human-neanderthal crossbreeding: Look up the keyword "almas" at wikipedia. A possible Almas was captured near an isolated village around 1850. Name Zana, she was eventually married off to a local villager. They had children, but most of those children died. The few survivors went on to have children of their own.

We do have a skull identified as the skull of one of Zana's grandchildren. Most recently the skull was identified as human, but genetic testing gave inconclusive results. Genome sequencing may give us better results.