Dating the last common ancestor of modern humans and neanderthals
To
discover why Neandertals are most closely related to people outside
Africa, Harvard and Max Planck Institute scientists have estimated the
date when Neandertals and modern Europeans last shared ancestors. The
research, published in the journal PLoS Genetics,
provides a historical context for the interbreeding. It suggests that
it occurred when modern humans carrying Upper Paleolithic technologies
encountered Neandertals as they expanded out of Africa.
When
the Neandertal genome was sequenced in 2010 it revealed that people
outside Africa share slightly more genetic variants with Neandertals
than Africans do. One scenario that could explain this observation is
that modern humans mixed with Neandertals when they came out of Africa.
An alternative, but more complex, scenario is that African populations
ancestral to both Neandertals and modern humans remained subdivided over
a few hundred thousand years and that those more related to Neandertals
subsequently left Africa.
Dr. Sriram Sankararaman and colleagues measured the length of DNA pieces in the genomes of Europeans that are similar to Neandertals. Since recombination between chromosomes when egg and sperm cells are formed reduces the size of such pieces in each generation, the Neandertal-related pieces will be smaller the longer they have spent in the genomes of present-day people.
The team estimate that Neandertals and modern humans last exchanged genes between 37,000 and 86,000 years ago, well after modern humans appeared outside Africa but potentially before they started spreading across Eurasia. This suggests that Neandertals (or their close relatives) had children with the direct ancestors of present-day people outside Africa.
Source: Public Library of Science [October 04, 2012]
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| Linkage disequilibrium patterns expected due to recent gene flow and ancient structure. (A) In the case of recent gene flow from Neandertals (NEA) into the ancestors of non-Africans (CEU) but not into the ancestors of Africans (YRI), we expect long range LD at sites where Neandertal has the derived allele, and this expectation of admixture generated LD is verified by computer simulation as shown in the right of the panel along with a fitted exponential decay curve. (B) In the case of ancient structure, we expect short range LD, reflecting the time since Neandertals and non-Africans derived from a shared ancestral population, and this expectation is also verified by simulation [Credit: PLoS doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1002947.g001] |
Dr. Sriram Sankararaman and colleagues measured the length of DNA pieces in the genomes of Europeans that are similar to Neandertals. Since recombination between chromosomes when egg and sperm cells are formed reduces the size of such pieces in each generation, the Neandertal-related pieces will be smaller the longer they have spent in the genomes of present-day people.
The team estimate that Neandertals and modern humans last exchanged genes between 37,000 and 86,000 years ago, well after modern humans appeared outside Africa but potentially before they started spreading across Eurasia. This suggests that Neandertals (or their close relatives) had children with the direct ancestors of present-day people outside Africa.
Source: Public Library of Science [October 04, 2012]
