Neanderthal DNA reveals human divergence
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Thursday November 16, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Anthropologist Svante Pääbo with a life-sized cast of a Neanderthal's leg bone in Leipzig, Germany. Photograph: Ja Woitas/EPA
Fragments of DNA plucked from a 38,000-year-old Neanderthal fossil have pinpointed the time when modern humans split from their long-faced, barrel-chested relatives to become the world's most formidable species. Anthropologists analysed 1 million "base pairs" of genetic material from a fossilised leg bone recovered from a cave in Vindija, Croatia, to show that modern humans and Neanderthals split evolutionary company 500,000 years ago. The feat is remarkable given the age and fragility of the DNA and marks a new push from geneticists to turn the most powerful technology of the day on some of the oldest remnants of life. The team behind the study, which appears in the journal Nature today, hopes to unravel all 3 billion base pairs of the Neanderthal genome within two years. Comparing the biological blueprint with the human genome will reveal the subtle genetic differences that underpin what it means to be human. It will also help solve an ongoing controversy over
whether Neanderthals and modern humans continued to interbreed after forming distinct species. "We believe that the Neanderthal genome promises to yield more insight into human biology than the sequencing of any individual human," said Dr Pääbo, who led the research at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The researchers used a revolutionary analysing technique called pyrosequencing to analyse tiny fragments of DNA from the Neanderthal and compared their sequence with that of the human and chimpanzee. They concluded that humans and Neanderthals, our closest relatives, split into two species around the time fire was harnessed - between 465,000 and 569,000 years ago, with the most likely estimate being 516,000 years ago. The scientists also discovered that Neanderthals emerged from a small population of just 3,000 individuals. Remains of Neanderthals dating back as far as 400,000 years ago suggest a reasonably sophisticated
species that crafted tools and weapons and buried its dead. The last Neanderthals died out nearly 40,000 years ago, as Homo sapiens migrated to, and eventually settled throughout, Europe. Chris Stringer, the head of human origins research at the Natural History Museum in London, said: "Research can now extend to complete the whole genome of a Neanderthal and to examine Neanderthal variation through time and space to compare with ours. Having such rich data holds the promise of looking for the equivalent genes in Neanderthals that code for specific features in modern humans, for example eye colour, skin and hair type ... Having a Neanderthal genome will also throw light on our own evolution." Peter Brown, an expert in human evolution at the University of New England in New South Wales, added: "Eventually we may even come to understand the genetic basis and adaptive significance of their most distinctive feature, a humungous nose."
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