Posted on 02/07/2009 8:31:28 PM PST by SunkenCiv
The entire genome of a 38,000-year-old Neanderthal has been sequenced by a team of scientists in Germany. The group is already extracting DNA from other ancient Neanderthal bones and hopes that the genomes will allow an unprecedented comparison between modern humans and their closest evolutionary relative. The three-year project, which cost about ?5 million (US$6.4 million), was carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. Project leader Svante Pääbo will announce the results of the preliminary genomic analysis at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois, which starts on 12 February... computational biologist Richard Green, is coordinating the analysis of the genome's 3 billion base pairs. Comparisons with the human genome may uncover evidence of interbreeding between Neanderthals and humans, the genomes of which overlap by more than 99%. They certainly had enough time for fraternization -- Homo sapiens emerged as a separate species by about 400,000 years ago, and Neanderthals became extinct just 30,000 years ago. Their last common ancestor lived about 660,000 years ago, give or take 140,000 years... The age of the sample means that its DNA has degraded into fragments typically only about 50-60 base pairs long. But the German group used new sequencing technology, developed by 454 Life Sciences of Branford, Connecticut, that can analyse segments of this length.
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
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To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
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· Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
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The Neandertal EnigmaFrayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]
by James Shreeve
bump
how long will it be before the Neanderthal is cloned?
If they were still alive today and could talk, would we classify them as not homo sapien?
Nuclear DNA Analysis Proves Neanderthals Were a Different Species
This confirms previous analyses of mitochondrial DNA.
A sequence of about a million base pairs ( about 0,03 % of the genome) has been achieved from a 45,000 years old male Neanderthal from Vindija Cave, in Northwestern Croatia. This sequence has allowed American and German scientists the first comparison of human and Neanderthal DNA.
The analysis showed that the two lineages diverged about 300,000 years ago and that Neanderthals may have had much DNA in common with chimps. Anyway, they share a common ancestor with us, but they are not more closely related than that.
Nucelar DNA analysis brought a new type of evidence to the longstanding debate over whether these hominids, which lived throughout Europe and western Asia from 300,000 years ago to 30,000 years ago, were a species separate, Homo neanderthaliensis, from our own, Homo sapiens, that did not contribute to the modern human gene pool, or whether they were a breed of our own species.
Previous researches were made only on mitochondrial DNA samples, which preserved better. Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, was the first to recover mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from a Neanderthal, back in 1997 and also the nuclear Neanderthal DNA. Several studies conducted on mitichondrial DNA pointed that it differed significantly from those of living humans.
Some critics argued that nuclear DNA might tell a totally different story. Nuclear DNA does not preserve so well as mt DNA in the fossils. In fact, very small fragments of nuclear DNA have been recoverable, which made the analysis even more difficult.
Human, chimpanzee and Neanderthal nuclear DNA samples have been compared. The team succeeded to manage such a small amount of DNA by using a novel sequencing technique. Neanderthal Y chromosome is very peculiar, differing substantially more from human and chimp Y chromosomes than are other chromosomes. This trait suggests that little interbreeding occurred, at least among the more recent Neanderthal populations and humans. “This is a hint of exciting things to come as more Neanderthal sequence is produced,” says David Haussler at the University of California, Santa Cruz, US.
The traditional method of sequencing DNA indicates that Neanderthals split off from the lineage that led to modern humans around 315,000 years ago, sustaining previous estimates. This confirms the ideas that Neanderthals did not contribute substantially to the modern human genome. “Were there Neanderthals in our lineage? All of the genetics seems to be going in the direction that there weren’t,” says Richard Potts, head of the Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Program in Washington DC, US.
Paabo’s Neanderthal Genome Project is aiming to sequence 10 Neanderthal genomes in the next 10 years.
If they lived among us now and interbred with us and produced fertile offspring, they would be considered part of our species, and for politically correct reasons would be re-classified as Homo sapiens sapiens, just like us and lose the Homo sapiens neandethalensis. But, since there is no evidence that they ever did interbreed with our line and they are indeed anatomically distinctly different than us (bigger muscles, brain organized in different ways, skeletal differences, facial differences, etc., etc.) they are, IMHO, correctly considered a different species.
Further, there is evidence that they were behaviorally different than us since their tools ("weapons") were less sophisticated than the ones our direct ancestors fashioned. And while it is PC to say we "outcompeted them" I believe that we wiped them out, and may very well have cannabilized them for good measure (after all, it was much easier to hunt Neandethals than elk or whatever).
So they think! But clearly they haven't met my ex-husband.
Take DNA samples from Webb Hubbell and others who are built like him and compare.
I thought I would pass this on to you also:
Take DNA samples from Webb Hubbell and others who are built like him and compare.
Sorry about your ex Neanderthal husband. I mean it.
It's never been a particular area of study for me, but in my drive by of the information, I don't think we know much about the level of contact. If there was, it seems there would have been sexual contact at some point, but from what I've read, there's no evidence of that. It's also possible that there was sex, but genetically they couldn't produce offspring, or if they did, the child was like a mule, incapable of reproduction, and no samples of DNA from the relatively small subset of offspring have been found. I've read about monkeys using "tools" such as sticks for weapons and leaves to scoop up water, but never of them deliberately assembling or making tools. The Neanderthal tools we've found tend to be somewhere between the monkeys and early humans, as they apparently shaped rocks for tools and such, but didn't go beyond that.
I've seen several reconstructions of neanderthal faces, and they go from being a human ape hybrid to being a face that cleaned up, would be unusual on the street, but not a "stop and stare" face.
With dinosaurs, there's what they were and what we fantasize them to be. I understand that the bird hip and cow hip dinosaurs are both extinct, but I have always contended that if crocodiles had died out before humans lived they would be referred to colloquially as dinosaurs. Various lizard hipped extinct species are referred to as dinosaurs, despite the fact that they don't fit into the strict "dinosaur" structure.
I see things as a continuum, and categories as being useful, but at some point arbitrary. You eventually have to pick a spot and say, "this is where it quits being one thing and starts being something else."
Monkeys do strip bark and leaves from small branches and stick them down anthills where the ants adhere to them. Then the monkeys eat them. Is that a manufactured tool? It is a modification of a natural object to be used to achieve some separate aim...
Same thing for ant nests and bee hives. There's an incredible amount of deliberate manipulation of the environment specifically for the purpose of making it more hospitable.
Won’t happen. The Neandertal genome *may* be reconstructed in entire (though I very much doubt it), and eventually technology may appear which allows stored genome sequences to be reproduced into a double helix from a data set, but it’s not likely that such an approach would / could be used to produce a living Neandertal — other than those of us (a billion or two, or more) who are descended from Neandertal.
That’s probably an artifact of the 19th century excoriation of the Neandertal, which began with Virchow I think.
Then what do you think about all this talk about cloning a mammoth?
One method (probably the easiest / most feasible one) would be to recover some nice juicy semen samples from frozen mammoth carcasses and use them to impregnate living female elephants. Specimens would be obtained from a number of different, uh, specimens, in order to breed a series of generations, to bring the offspring to “mostly” mammoth over a period of, say, 50 years.
I’m surprised that no one has suggested recovering eggs from frozen female mammoths and doing the in vitro whisk with some mammoth semen, then implanting embryos in a number of different elephants. Probably would be less feasible, since the semen would have frozen more quickly after death.
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