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MA new study suggests that humans may have been eliminated by influenza if they did not mate with Neanderthals.
Scientists at Stanford University discovered that the old methods led to the important DNA exchange that protected humans from disease after they left Africa.
Neanderthals died out about 40,000 years ago, but most modern Europeans still have about 2% of their DNA in their genome.
The researchers discovered that the 152 genes we inherited from the Neanderthals were interacting with modern influenza A and hepatitis C, and helping our ancestors fight diseases when they encountered them.
"Our research shows that a large number of frequent Neanderthal DNA extracts have been adapted for a very cool reason," said Dr. Dmitry Petrov, an evolution biologist at the US Department of Homeland Health. Stanford Faculty of Human Sciences.
"The Neanderthal genes have probably afforded us some protection against the viruses our ancestors encountered when they left Africa."
At the first contact between the two species, Neanderthals had been living off Africa for hundreds of thousands of years, leaving their immune systems with enough time to develop defenses against infectious viruses in Europe.
But our newly migrated ancestors, by comparison, would have been much more vulnerable.
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