Posted on 08/09/2011 11:36:54 AM PDT by neverdem
Modern humans may have picked up key genes from extinct relatives.
For a field that relies on fossils that have lain undisturbed for tens of thousands of years, ancient human genomics is moving at breakneck speed. Barely a year after the publication of the genomes of Neanderthals1 and of an extinct human population from Siberia2, scientists are racing to apply the work to answer questions about human evolution and history that would have been unfathomable just a few years ago.
The past months have seen a swathe of discoveries, from details about when Neanderthals and humans interbred, to the important disease-fighting genes that humans now have as a result of those trysts.
Click for larger imageNeanderthals were large-bodied hunter-gatherers, named after the German valley where their bones were first discovered, who roamed Europe and parts of Asia from 400,000 years ago until about 30,000 years ago. The Neanderthal genome — shepherded by Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany — indicates that their evolutionary story began to split from the lineage of modern humans less than half a million years ago, when their common ancestor lived in Africa (see 'The human strain'). In December last year, Pääbo's team released the genetic blueprint of another population of ancient humans — unlike ourselves or the Neanderthals — that was based on DNA recovered from a 30,000–50,000-year-old finger bone found in a cave in Denisova in southern...
--snip--
Since then, scientists have fleshed out the details of one of the biggest surprises from the Neanderthal genome: humans living outside Africa owe up to 4% of their DNA to Neanderthals. One explanation might be that humans migrating out of Africa mated with Neanderthals, probably resident in the Middle East, before their offspring fanned out across Europe and Asia...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
I did reply to your contention that wolves and coyotes are the same species. They are not, any more than tigers and lions are the same species - despite the fact that they can produce fertile offspring.
If I understand you correctly there were two migrations out of Africa one was the white race the other was the black race
am I correct in saying that?
That's the point I was trying to make. Your knowledge perhaps being that of an anthropologist (at least you sound like one), and mine that of an interested layman. I was aware of the later out-of-Asia theory, thence to Africa and elsewhere.
Instead, the Sen people arose from a Homo Habilis population in Western Asia. They then got a yen for travel and went Souf', North, East and West ~ the Sen still exist and live in South Africa.
Their descendants live back up the trail.
"White" has arisen maybe three times ~ with Neanderthals, with Europeans, with East Asians. In all cases the condition happens in areas of reduced incidence of sunlight and is believed to be rather recent (as this sort of thing happens).
Light skinned East Asians are made "light" by a different set of genes than light skinned Europeans, or light skinned Neanderthals. I have no doubt that when "they" are done with their analysis and categorization of DNA genes and the external epigenetic controls they'll find a number of ways extra melanin gets produced.
These critters we're talking about are RACES ~ not even subspecies.
A Jackel is a subspecies of the same species as the wolf-dog-ote!
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I inherited my Big Belly gene from ... grandpa Gene.
Their mitochondrial DNA is distinctly wolf.
Wolves and coyotes are distinct species if species (a word humans made up as an imprecise guide to reality) is to have any meaning at all.
A swamp may well have many plants and features in common with a forest - and some forests may be turning into swamps and some swamps turning into forests - but that doesn't mean that “swamp” and “forest” mean the same thing.
Eventually all the dogs and all the redwolves, and gray wolves, and coyotes, and coydogs, and any other combination you want to find in that species will have mitochondrial DNA inherited from a single Ur-Wolf Mother!
(if they are allowed to breed around that will happen with any species).
Their non-mitochondrial DNA will, of course, be mixed and matched ~ and circulate forever ~ except for that in their y-chromosome. That, too, tends to become a dominant factor simply because of the math.
Come to Nevada. I can show you 90 pound animals that look exactly like their 35 pound “coyote” relatives. Somebody let a Great Dane into the woodpile.
Just because some forests have swamp like characteristics or may be in the process of becoming a swamp doesn't mean that “swamp” and “forest” mean the same thing.
Anyway all this quibbling over your peculiar and misguided grouping of species doesn't change the point I made in regards to wolves and coyotes..........
Just because we have some 4% neanderthal ancestry and Africans do not - it doesn't mean that we are 96% different - that 4% ancestry may be distinctly neanderthal DNA - but it is still over 95% the same sequence as human DNA.
Humans, as a species, are not very different from each other in DNA. And mixing in 4% of something that is some 98% the same doesn't add up to a 4% difference - not using any math based in reality.
I've heard more than once, that people and chimps share 98% DNA. Only 2% is different.
When it comes to "species" there are actually three definitions out there ~ one of them refers to what we now call clades. Another to what we now call subspecies. And another to what we now call Salmon. The EPA interprets the endangered species act to allow them to treat each batch of salmon that favor one crick over another as a totally separate species!
Looking at all these critters at the level of their DNA it's pretty obvious that Dogs, Wolves, Coyotes and mixes thereof are NOT KITTY KATS!
Epigenetics is also not “outside of the double helix” it involves methylation of the double helix molecule.
Biologically there is only one definition of species - it is how it is interpreted that comes into issues with “lumpers” and “splitters”.
You seem the ultimate “lumper” - lumping species that not even the most extreme professional lumpers (taxonomists) want to lump together.
Humans and chimps are 98% the same in GENETIC DNA - the DNA that makes up a gene - one that produces a RNA transcript that codes for a functional protein. Over the entire genome we are about 94% the same.
And mixing in 4% of something that is over 90% the same when you started (humans and neanderthals) doesn’t add up to a 4% difference.
Lumping foxes, wolves, dogs, jackels and a variety of other animals into the same family is not a problem.
The problem arises out of the idea that DOGS and WOLVES and COYOTES which can and do breed freely, prolifically if we let them, and in the most fertile manner are DIFFERENT SPECIES ~ not in your wildest imagination ~ it would be like pronouncing Black Humans to be a different species than White Humans.
I'm sorry. Does not compute. Doesn't work. Even isolation to separate ranges (Northern high latitudes and Equator) is insufficient to justify identifying mere racial differences as constituting the basis of declaring a group to be a species.
As Shakira sang, "the hips don't lie".
How about Tigers and Lions?
They can breed fertile offspring - and until humans reduced their ranges - their ranges used to overlap.
Are Tigers and Lions, according to your unique and peculiar “system”, different species?
Take a good look at where the methylation is located. It is not "outside" the double helix but inside. It is not "substituted" for anything - it is added to the nucleic acid base inside the double helix phosphate backbones. Neither is it a system "outside" of DNA - it is a system for regulating the expression of DNA.
The Mystery of the Missing Fingerprints
Human skin cells converted directly into functional neurons (without stem cells)
Researchers use human cells to engineer functional anal sphincters in lab
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
The Mystery of the Missing Fingerprints
Human skin cells converted directly into functional neurons (without stem cells)
Researchers use human cells to engineer functional anal sphincters in lab
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
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