Tue 22 Aug 2006
“All Your Base Are Mine!” says Svante Pääbo to the Neanderthals
Posted by Marcus under Current Events, Science
[2] Comments
Decoding genomes is getting cheaper. Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is busy decoding the genome for the Neanderthal. Decoding the genetic makeup of Neanderthals will allow us to see just where this human relative falls in our family tree. By comparing the makeup of this genome with that of the varous races of modern humans, and with bonobos and chimpanzees we can see a little more clearly where they fall.
The genome of Neanderthal is not easy to decode because the available samples are few and far between, and degraded through thousands and thousands of years. This is less of a hindrance to Pääbo than you would expect. His partnership with 454 Life Sciences provides him with sequencing equipment ideally suited for the job. The equipment works on efficiently sequencing small segments of DNA, no more than a few hundred base pairs long. Neanderthal DNA fragments have only a hundred or so pairs remaining in sequence after all these years. This length is ideal for the 454 Life Sciences machines. By sequencing many fragments, each sequence can be “plugged into” the bigger framework of the very similar human genome based upon known references in the chain.
What can we expect to learn from this? Was there Human – Neanderthal interbreeding? What did Neanderthals look like – hair, eyes, skin color? Did they have sophisticated speech? What characteristics did Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens’ common ancestor share with us? What adaptations did Neanderthals have that made them well suited to cold climates?
This is exciting research, and will yield a lot of new knowledge about us and our cousin the Neanderthal.
2 Responses to “ “All Your Base Are Mine!” says Svante Pääbo to the Neanderthals ”
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[…] Well, this same fellow also did a similar experiment with rats! He developed two colonies; one about as friendly as you can imagine, and the other colony a clan of uber-rodents that are more vicious than those in Willard. Frank Albert of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionalry Anthropology has convinced Dr. Belyaev to loan him a few rats from each of his strains to look for the genetic differences between the two closely bred colonies.Working with Svante Paabo of the Institute, they are seeking to sequence the genetic makeup of each colony of rats and identify the genetic differences, hopefully identifying the operative genes for domestication. This is possible since the two colonies are from the same stock only a few generations ago. […]
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I just watched a presentation by Dr.Pääbo reporting on the interim results of his research. It appears that our most recent common ancestor with Neanderthals lived about 450,000 years ago. The distribution of modern mutations in neanderthals does not overlap any modern population substantially more than any other. It indicates that there was little interbreeding with modern humans.
The Neanderthal samples do contain a pair of FoxP2 genes which vary between modern humans and other primates, and knocking out the extra copy seems to seriously inhibit language. This component of language equipment is present in neanderthals.
The video is available here: http://gustavus.edu/events/nobelconference/2008/paabo-lecture.php