A collaborative study by laboratories based in the United States, Switzerland and Russia, has identified hundreds of small regions of the genome that appear to be uniquely regulated in human neurons. These regulatory differences could be responsible for our intellectual abilities but also for our vulnerability to human diseases diseases like autism or Alzheimer disease.
Read the paper here
A team led by Prof Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania have published in Cell (August 2012) a study that sequenced the whole genomes of five individuals in each of three different hunter-gatherer populations at > 60× coverage: Pygmies from Cameroon and Khoesan-speaking Hadza and Sandawe from Tanzania. The study reveals genetic signs of natural selection in human populations. Compared with agricultural and pastoral populations, the hunter-gatherer populations showed distinct DNA patterns in genes involved in immunity, metabolism, smell, and taste, suggesting that the populations adapted to specific pathogens, food sources, and other local environmental factors. Moreover, the researchers identified several candidate genes that could be responsible for short stature in Pygmies. In addition, they found evidence of ancient interbreeding between the ancestors of modern Africans and another hominin lineage. Link to the paper here.
4 million variants identified in African hunter-gatherers, many of which are novel
Given that non-Africans can trace up to ~4% of their genome to Neanderthals and that modern-day Papuans owe ~6% or their genome, how much of a Neanderthal (or Denisovan) are you?
In 2005 National Geographic launched a project aimed at using genetic analysis to map tens of thousands of years of human migration. Now, and it launches the Genographic 2.0 project, which promises to bring a more detailed resolution to the human evolutionary and genetic history.
Browse the slides presentation below.
Ed Green explains the discovery of Denisovans
Prof. Ed Green, from the University of California in Santa Cruz, who was involved in the analysis of the genome of Denisovan remains, explains the discovery. Watch this video.
Prof Svante Pääbo and his team from the Max Planck Institure for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, who led the project.
For a long time we believed that our species was the only living Homo species. then we knew that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals had interbred and that a ~4% of Eurasians genome (not Africans) is of Neanderthal origin. Now, new genetic evidence from the remains of an extinct girl who lived in SIberia more than 50kya suggests that our ancestor could also have interbred with a new species of Homo nicknamed “Denisovans” (link to Nature 2012 paper)
Human evolution 