Neanderthal Dna Lives on in Modern Human1

Neanderthal DNA Lives On in Modern Human 1

In the article “Neanderthal DNA Lives On in Modern Human”, written by Jennifer Pinkowski, we are finding out that scientists were able to crack Neanderthal’s genome, which helped them conclude that some of DNA of humans closest relatives, survived to present days. Ancient-DNA expert Svante Pääbo, and his team of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, worked together and they have successfully reconstructed 60 percent of the Neanderthal’s DNA, which they extracted from bone fragments found in Croatia in the late 1970’s. Those were the bones of three female Neanderthals, approximately 38,000- 44,000 years old. Neanderthals were the species of hominid that lived from 400,000 to 30,000 years ago, and modern humans were the reason why are they extinct now.

This was a significant discovery, because it proved that in some point, modern humans mated with Neanderthals. That probably happened somewhere in North Africa or in Middle East, 80,000 years ago. And it was a final proof for scientists that suspected interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals occurred somewhere in the past. Sequencing DNA was not such an easy job to do because researchers had issues with eliminating bacterial and fungal DNA. Later on, scientists compared that DNA with five modern people DNA’s. They compared it with one person from Southern Africa, one from Western Africa, one from China, one Papua New Guinean, and one French person. This had shown that there is an absence of Neanderthal’s DNA in Africans, and it is very possible that interbreed between Neanderthals and modern humans happened when they have already left Africa, and were migrating in Europe and Asia. The study found Neanderthal’s DNA in humans, but not vice versa. Scientists are not sure if humans and Neanderthals mated only a few times in small population or in large population more often, but this significant discovery do prove interbreeding had happened....