Humans share at least 93% of their DNA with two ancient peoples – study

Sorry for the uniqueness of people, but we need to talk about genome. According to a new study of the human genome, we share about 98% of our genome with Ancient hominin.

Discover – According to a publication paper earlier this year in the magazine Scientific advance.

INVEST is counting down the 20 scientific discoveries that make us say “WTF” by 2021. This is #10. See full list here.

In compare modern human genome with Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes, four standout findings:

• At least 93 percent our modern human genome overlaps with hominin ancestor.
• At most, the human genome is 7 percent only to us, or as little as 1.5 percent.
• Over the past 600,000 years, our genetic adaptations have been primarily concerned with brain development and function.
• The degree of genetic overlap suggests that there was a large degree of interbreeding among ancient groups of humans.

How did they do – Sourced publicly available data on the modern human, Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes, the researchers sequenced the genomes of the genome itself and then applied the ancestral recombination graph tool, a form of genetic analysis.

With this tool, they sketched a genetic tree consisting of three species.

“If you sequence a group of people, you can create a tree that shows how relevant people are, on average, across the entire genome.” Nathan Schaefer told Inverse at that time. Schaefer is a bioinformatician at the University of California, San Francisco, and the lead author of the paper.

Dive into the details – Result trees can help researchers show when H. sapiens adapted and different from other ancient peoples. They could also help us track when our species came into contact with other archaic species homininand how they might have interacted.

In addition to genes, what matters is how those genes translate into proteins – and in turn, how they work. In that sense, “we are very similar to Neanderthals,” says Schaefer.

“You know, we have about 20,000 genes and somewhere about 40 genes that have differences in the actual coding that all humans have one version of, and Neanderthals have another,” he said. speak.

That means only a small fraction of the genes in our genome differ from the Neanderthal genome. But while that difference may be small, it is significant.

Why is it important – A 1.5% difference in our genome is tiny, but it could be the defining thing Homo sapiens — and especially our cognitive adaptation.

Whatever the circumstances that led to the evolution of our brains could have been hundreds of thousands of years ago. Schaefer and other researchers wanted to learn more about how the genes that govern the development and function of our brains work. A step further is to question how gene mutations become active.

There’s also the question of genetic mixing – how do we share so much Neanderthal and Denisovan genetics? Knowing where we’re coming from is the best way to know where we’re going.

INVEST is counting down to 20 scientific discoveries that make us say “WTF” by 2021. Here’s #10. Read original story here.