{"id":2614,"date":"2020-01-31T23:44:38","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T10:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/?p=2614"},"modified":"2020-01-31T23:49:14","modified_gmt":"2020-01-31T10:49:14","slug":"neandertals-genetic-legacy-extends-into-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2020\/01\/neandertals-genetic-legacy-extends-into-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"neandertals&#8217; genetic legacy extends into africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the last few years it&#8217;s been pretty much received wisdom that African populations shared only a tiny proportion of their genes, if any, with Neanderthals. In contrast, other non-African <em>sapiens<\/em> populations had <a href=\"https:\/\/ghr.nlm.nih.gov\/primer\/dtcgenetictesting\/neanderthaldna\">a small but significant admixture of Neanderthal genes<\/a>.\u00a0The underlying reason for this, it&#8217;s been assumed, is that\u00a0<em>Homo sapiens<\/em> and\u00a0<em>neandertalensis<\/em> only bred with each other in Europe and Asia.<\/p>\n<p>However, a new study (<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.cell.2020.01.012\">Chen, Wolf, Fu, Li &amp; Akey, 2020<\/a>) seems set to change that understanding. The researchers employed a technique that used DNA sequences from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Denisova_Cave\">a Neanderthal who&#8217;d lived in Denisova cave<\/a> (in the Altai mountains) as an &#8216;archaic&#8217; reference sample, and compared that with genomes from 2504 modern humans. The technique allowed them to identify sequences that had entered a population&#8217;s gene pool via <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Introgression\">introgression<\/a>, finding that &#8220;African individuals carry a stronger signal of Neanderthal ancestry than previously thought&#8221; &#8211; about 0.3% of their genome, compared to around 2% in Europeans and Asians. Some of those genes may have been selected for. They also found a\u00a0<em>lot\u00a0<\/em>of overlap between Africans and non-Africans: &#8220;of the Neanderthal sequence identified in African samples, more than 94% was shared with non-Africans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>How to explain this? After careful analysis, the team concluded that there were probably <a href=\"https:\/\/els-jbs-prod-cdn.literatumonline.com\/cms\/attachment\/f6498529-1877-404d-8f97-659502b6a25e\/fx1.jpg\">two events involved<\/a>. The first: Neanderthal genes were carried into the African gene pool by\u00a0<em>Homo sapiens<\/em> individuals migrating back into Africa, after picking up Neanderthal sequences as a result of hybridisation. Interestingly, this seems to have happened after European and East Asian\u00a0<em>sapiens<\/em> populations diverged, and involved individuals from Europe, not Asia.\u00a0In addition, their modelling suggested a certain amount of human -&gt; Neanderthal gene flow resulting from migrations at least 100,000 years ago, preceding the main Out-of-Africa diaspora.<\/p>\n<p>Students looking at previous years&#8217; Schol Bio exam papers will have heard about the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/news\/2017\/06\/world-s-oldest-homo-sapiens-fossils-found-morocco\">Jebel Irhoud fossil<\/a>, an ancient\u00a0<em>sapiens<\/em> cranium and jaw that&#8217;s a mosaic of ancient and modern characteristics. <a href=\"https:\/\/www-nature-com.ezproxy.waikato.ac.nz\/articles\/nature22336\">At least some authors<\/a> have suggested that this mix of features could be evidence of introgression of Neanderthal genes, perhaps as a result of those back-migrations from Europe into Africa. I think this is very much a case of &#8220;watch this space&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.cell.2020.01.012\">L.Chen, A.B.Wolf, W.Fu, L.Li, J.M.Akey (2020) Identifying and interpreting apparent Neanderthal ancestry in African individuals. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Cell<\/span> https:\/\/doi.org\/10\/1016\/j.cell.2020.01.012<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the last few years it&#8217;s been pretty much received wisdom that African populations shared only a tiny proportion of their genes, if any, with Neanderthals. In contrast, other non-African sapiens populations had a small but significant admixture of Neanderthal genes.\u00a0The underlying reason for this, it&#8217;s been assumed, is that\u00a0Homo sapiens and\u00a0neandertalensis only bred with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":2395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,7,13,2],"tags":[12,8,9,14,4],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>neandertals&#039; genetic legacy extends into africa : BioBlog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2020\/01\/neandertals-genetic-legacy-extends-into-africa\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"neandertals&#039; genetic legacy extends into africa : BioBlog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For the last few years it&#8217;s been pretty much received wisdom that African populations shared only a tiny proportion of their genes, if any, with Neanderthals. In contrast, other non-African sapiens populations had a small but significant admixture of Neanderthal genes.\u00a0The underlying reason for this, it&#8217;s been assumed, is that\u00a0Homo sapiens and\u00a0neandertalensis only bred with [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2020\/01\/neandertals-genetic-legacy-extends-into-africa\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"BioBlog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-01-31T10:44:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-01-31T10:49:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/06\/29080690335_bc12da87f8_c.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Alison\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@AcampbelTeacher\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Alison\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2020\/01\/neandertals-genetic-legacy-extends-into-africa\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2020\/01\/neandertals-genetic-legacy-extends-into-africa\/\",\"name\":\"neandertals' genetic legacy extends into africa : BioBlog\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2020\/01\/neandertals-genetic-legacy-extends-into-africa\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2020\/01\/neandertals-genetic-legacy-extends-into-africa\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/06\/29080690335_bc12da87f8_c.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-01-31T10:44:38+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-01-31T10:49:14+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/#\/schema\/person\/9676347d9dce672ed12b14407e623cea\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2020\/01\/neandertals-genetic-legacy-extends-into-africa\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-NZ\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2020\/01\/neandertals-genetic-legacy-extends-into-africa\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-NZ\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2020\/01\/neandertals-genetic-legacy-extends-into-africa\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/06\/29080690335_bc12da87f8_c.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/06\/29080690335_bc12da87f8_c.jpg\",\"width\":800,\"height\":800,\"caption\":\"Neanderthal: photo by Allan Henderson, on Flickr\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2020\/01\/neandertals-genetic-legacy-extends-into-africa\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"neandertals&#8217; 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