SEED hits the major points, and Paabo confirms:
At last, anthropology and genetics have a point of agreement in terms of the fate of Neanderthals. Henry Harpending, an anthropologist at the University of Utah who edited Lahn's paper, described the analysis supporting its conclusions as "quite bulletproof."Pääbo, made famous for his mtDNA evidence against interbreeding, hailed it as "the most compelling case to date showing a genetic contribution of Neanderthals to modern humans," and said he plans to to seek confirmation of Lahn's findings in his own work on the Neanderthal genome.
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The complete genome of a Neanderthal dating to about 38,000 years ago has been sequenced by the team lead by Svante Paabo. The genome will be announced on Darwin's Birthay, Feb 12.
"We are working like crazy at the moment," says Pääbo, adding that his Max Planck colleague, computational…
They've finally done it. Bruce Lahn's lab has an article in PNAS (review here) showing evidence for introgression of a gene from an archaic Homo species into the modern human genome. They suggest the possibility that Neanderthals are that archaic species. That's right: there are Neanderthals among…
Most of you probably know this, but the race is on to sequence the Neandertal genome. Nick Wade has a decent story on it. Important point:
The chimp and human genomes differ at just 1 percent of the sites on their DNA. At this 1 percent, Neanderthals resemble humans at 96 percent of the sites […
Or, to be less crude, did modern humans, having already evolved in Africa, interbreed with the local Europeans who were Neanderthals, and if so, did they produce fertile offspring ... and, did this happen in sufficient degree to have mattered at all to the genetics of later (but not necessarily…
Hey Razib,
Thanks for the linkage. :)
Please pardon a naive question ... but if there is no mitochondrial neandertal dna in modern humans, then any genetic inheritance from the neandertals must have come from neandertal men impregnating modern women. And not ever, or nearly not ever, vice-versa. Is that correct?
BTW, Discover magazine, in its December 2006 issue, lists Paabo as one of two runners-up for Scientist of the year. The winner is Jay Keasling.
Since Discover also features an intro by Kary B. Mullis to its article "The All-Time Essential Reading List", one might ask, who cares what they think?