I suspect the basic general process of introgression is clear to most of you, though I will get back to it soon. But here are some papers with candidate genes (click "related" for more references):
RRM2P4, dystrophin, xp21.1 and 17q21.31. Also, I should add in the amusing evidence that archaics and moderns had sexual intercourse (amusing, but scientific nonetheless). Finally, a more theoretical paper that just came out.
There are other possibilities, like MC1R, but that could also be frequency dependent selection. More to come soon, I promise....
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Last week I blogged about the strange story of our past encoded in the DNA of lice. We carry two lineages of lice, one of which our Homo sapiens ancestors may have picked up in Asia from another hominid, Homo erectus. I always get a kick imagining human beings, having migrated out of Africa around…
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Don't bet on it, Michael. Paleoarchaeology postdoc. and regular Querencia reader Laura wrote to me off- blog:
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From a geneticist's point of view, male pattern baldness - also known as androgenic alopecia - is a tempting target. Baldness is common in the general population, with a prevalence that increases sharply with age (as a rule of thumb, a male's percentage risk of baldness is approximately equal to…
Now you have something.
Still the authours seem to remain cautious and consider alternative possibilities (selective pressure, for instance) and I imagine that this paper will cause quite an upheaval and hopefully interesting criticisms and maybe also interesting new studies that may add or substract to the apparent conclussions in it.
Whatever the final conclussions (if any) all that should add to a better understanding of our origins.