Researchers find gene flow between modern humans and Neanderthals
Researchers have identified gene flow between modern humans and Neanderthals. "The study reveals significant evidence of interbreeding between the two species," says the lead scientist. This groundbreaking discovery provides new insights into human evolutionary history.
TroibNews 
A collaborative team of scientists from China and the United States has found ample evidence for gene flow between modern humans and their prehistoric cousins, the Neanderthals.
Neanderthals are an extinct species of archaic humans who lived as hunter-gatherers in Europe and Western Asia around 400,000 years ago, disappearing approximately 30,000 years ago.
When modern human populations migrated from Africa to the Middle East, they likely shared both the timeframe and the landscape with the Neanderthals, suggesting a period of coexistence and potential genetic intermingling.
Researchers from Southeast University in Nanjing and Princeton University devised a method to estimate the occurrence of human-introgressed sequences within the Neanderthal genome. They applied this method to whole-genome sequence data from a diverse sample including 2,000 contemporary humans and three Neanderthals.
Their findings demonstrated that Neanderthal genomes contain between 2.5 and 3.7 percent of genetic sequences originating from modern humans, as reported in the latest edition of the weekly journal Science.
The genetic analysis also indicated that the Neanderthal population was significantly smaller than previously estimated, around 20 percent less. This smaller population size suggests a higher likelihood of accumulating harmful mutations within the Neanderthal gene pool.
Furthermore, the team proposed the possibility of two distinct waves of gene flow from humans to Neanderthals, occurring approximately 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, respectively.
These findings regarding the smaller estimated population size and inferred admixture dynamics align with a scenario where the Neanderthal population gradually decreased over time, eventually being absorbed into the modern human gene pool, according to the researchers.
Ian Smith contributed to this report for TROIB News
Neanderthals are an extinct species of archaic humans who lived as hunter-gatherers in Europe and Western Asia around 400,000 years ago, disappearing approximately 30,000 years ago.
When modern human populations migrated from Africa to the Middle East, they likely shared both the timeframe and the landscape with the Neanderthals, suggesting a period of coexistence and potential genetic intermingling.
Researchers from Southeast University in Nanjing and Princeton University devised a method to estimate the occurrence of human-introgressed sequences within the Neanderthal genome. They applied this method to whole-genome sequence data from a diverse sample including 2,000 contemporary humans and three Neanderthals.
Their findings demonstrated that Neanderthal genomes contain between 2.5 and 3.7 percent of genetic sequences originating from modern humans, as reported in the latest edition of the weekly journal Science.
The genetic analysis also indicated that the Neanderthal population was significantly smaller than previously estimated, around 20 percent less. This smaller population size suggests a higher likelihood of accumulating harmful mutations within the Neanderthal gene pool.
Furthermore, the team proposed the possibility of two distinct waves of gene flow from humans to Neanderthals, occurring approximately 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, respectively.
These findings regarding the smaller estimated population size and inferred admixture dynamics align with a scenario where the Neanderthal population gradually decreased over time, eventually being absorbed into the modern human gene pool, according to the researchers.
Ian Smith contributed to this report for TROIB News
