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What makes humans unique? Scientists have taken another step toward solving a lingering puzzle with a new tool that could allow more precise comparisons between the DNA of modern humans and that of our extinct ancestors.
According to a study published Friday in Science Advances, only 7% of our genome is shared with other humans, and not shared by other Neanderthal ancestors.
“It’s a very low percentage,” said Nathan Schaefer, a computer biologist at the University of California and co-author of the new article. “This kind of discovery is why scientists are reluctant to think that we are very different from Neanderthals.”
A reconstructed Neanderthal skeleton, right, and a modern human skeleton on display at the Museum of Natural History in New York. (AP Photo / Frank Franklin II)
The research is based on DNA extracted from the fossil remains of now extinct Neanderthals and Denisovans dating from around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, as well as 279 modern people around the world.
Scientists already know that modern humans share some DNA with Neanderthals, but different people share different parts of the genome. One of the goals of the new research was to identify genes exclusive to modern humans.
This is a difficult statistical problem, said John Hawkes, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the research, and the researchers developed “a valuable tool that takes into account the missing data in the old genome “.
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The researchers also found that a smaller part of our genome – just 1.5% – is unique to our species and common to all living things today. These DNA fragments may hold the most important clues about what really sets modern humans apart.
“We can say that these regions of the genome are rich in genes related to neural development and brain function,” said Richard Green, co-author of the article and computer biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
In 2010, Green helped produce the first draft of the Neanderthal genome sequence. Four years later, geneticist Joshua Ake co-wrote an article showing that modern humans carry the remnants of Neanderthal DNA. Since then, scientists have continued to refine techniques for extracting and analyzing genetic material from fossils.
“Better tools allow us to ask increasingly detailed questions about human history and development,” said Aki, who is currently at Princeton University and has not been involved in the new research. He praised the new method of study.
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However, Alan Templeton, a population geneticist at Washington University in St. Louis, questioned the authors’ hypothesis that changes in the human genome are distributed randomly, rather than clustered around hot spots. specific in the world. genome;
“We’re actually a very small species,” Aki said. “It wasn’t that long ago that the planet was shared with other human races.”
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