Neanderthals Didn’t Mate With Modern Humans, Study Says
August 12, 2008
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080812-neandertal-dna.html
The research further suggests that small population numbers helped do in our closest relatives.
Researchers sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome—genetic information passed down from mothers—of a 38,000-year-old Neanderthal thighbone found in a cave in Croatia. (Get the basics on genetics.)
The new sequence contains 16,565 DNA bases, or “letters,” representing 13 genes, making it the longest stretch of Neanderthal DNA ever examined.
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is easier to isolate from ancient bones than conventional or “nuclear” DNA—which is contained in cell nuclei—because there are many mitochondria per cell.
“Also, the mtDNA genome is much smaller than the nuclear genome,” said study author Richard Green of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany.
“That’s what let us finish this genome well before we finish the nuclear genome,” he said.
The new findings are detailed in the August 8 issue of the journal Cell.
EXCERPTED.
“Neanderthals Didn’t Mate With Modern Humans, Study Says”
Please explain Howard Dean.
There’s nothing about just one sample, taken from one individual, of mtDNA, that could possibly reveal anything about whether Neandertal and so-called modern humans mated.