"They come here. They all come here. How do they find me?"
Posted on 07/24/2006 11:41:28 AM PDT by doc30
BERLIN — U.S. and German scientists have launched a two-year project to decipher the genetic code of the Neanderthal, a feat they hope will help deepen understanding of how modern humans' brains evolved.
Neanderthals were a species that lived in Europe and western Asia from more than 200,000 years ago to about 30,000 years ago. Scientists from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology are teaming up a company in Connecticut to map the genome, or humans' DNA code.
“The Neanderthal is the closest relative to the modern human, and we believe that by sequencing the Neanderthal we can learn a lot,” said Michael Egholm, a vice-president at 454 Life Sciences Corp. of Branford, Conn., which will use its high-speed sequencing technology in the project.
There are no firm answers yet about how humans picked up key traits such as walking upright and developing complex language. Neanderthals are believed to have been relatively sophisticated, but lacking in humans' higher reasoning functions.
The Neanderthal project follows scientists' achievement last year in deciphering the DNA of the chimpanzee, our closest living relative. That genome map produced a long list of DNA differences between humans and chimps and some hints about which differences might be crucial.
The chimp genome “led to literally too many questions, there were 35 million differences between us and chimpanzees – that's too much to figure out,” 454 chairman Jonathan Rothberg said in a telephone interview.
“By having Neanderthal, we'll really be able to home in on the small percentage of differences that gave us higher cognitive abilities,” he said. “Neanderthal is going to open the box. It's not going to answer the question, but it's going to tell where to look to understand all of those higher cognitive functions.”
Over two years, the scientists aim to reconstruct a draft of the three-billion building blocks of the Neanderthal genome – working with fossil samples from several individuals.
They face the complication of working with 40,000-year-old samples, and of filtering out microbial DNA that contaminated them after death.
Only about 5 per cent of the DNA in the samples is actually Neanderthal DNA, Mr. Egholm said, but he and Mr. Rothberg said pilot experiments had convinced them that the decoding was feasible.
At the Max Planck Institute, the project also involves Svante Paabo, who nine years ago participated in a pioneering, though smaller-scale, DNA test on a Neanderthal sample.
That study suggested that Neanderthals and humans split from a common ancestor a half-million years ago and backed the theory that Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end.
The new project will help in understanding how characteristics unique to humans evolved and “will also identify those genetic changes that enabled modern humans to leave Africa and rapidly spread around the world,” Mr. Paabo said in a statement Thursday.
Bye Troll! :)
"They come here. They all come here. How do they find me?"
Yuk!
those skulls are most probably simply a type of hominid; could even be something similar to a bigfoot type creature. It's just speculation to say they are transitionals and very poor science as we don't see the many thousands or millions of true transitionals that evolution calls for. Not completed life that has already morphed. And the fact wills always remain that if they existed the debate would have been over. I don't know how you can overlook that. I think you guys have such a low opinion and disdain for creation scientists. Maybe you had a bad experience with religion in your background?
thanks...the evidence is there for all to see. There is so much amazing evidence for creationism that falls under science that it is really sad the public school kids are kept from it; at least during school hours. No academic freedom there.
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I will build the rocket. :-)
I helped fly the Magellan spacecraft to Venus (on the tax payers dime) Worth every penny BTW!
Did we get up on the wrong side of bed this morning?
Try some cookies and warm milk, spread your blankie out on the floor and take a nice nap. You'll feel much better.
Flame away all you want - but you merely prove my point.
well proven
You actually made me bust out laughing.
You sure seem to have a tough time with us gubnent scientists!
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