Washington: What makes humans unique? Scientists have taken another step towards resolving eternal mysteries with new tools that allow more precise comparisons between modern human DNA and that of our extinct ancestors.
Only 7% of our genome uniquely shared with other humans, and were not distributed by other early ancestors, according to a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances.
“That’s a fairly small percentage,” said Nathan Schaefer, a California computing biologist and a joint writer from a new paper.
“This kind of finding is why scientists turn away from thinking that we humans are very different from Neanderthals.” This research withdrew DNA extracted from the remnants of Neanderthal fossils that are now extinct and denisovans from around 40,000 or 50,000 years ago, as well as from 279 modern people from all over the world.
Scientists already know that modern people share DNA with Neanderthals, but different people share different parts of the genome.
One of the objectives of new research is to identify exclusive genes for modern humans.
This is a difficult statistical problem, and researchers “develop valuable tools that take into account the lost data in the ancient genome,” said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the study.
The researchers also found that a small portion of our genome fraction – only 1.5% – equally unique to our species and shared among all those who live today.
DNA’s stimal can accommodate the most significant instructions on what really distinguishes modern humans.
“We can tell genome areas that are highly enriched for genes related to the development of nerves and brain function,” said University of California, a biologist for computing Santa Cruz Richard Green, a paper co-author writer.
In 2010, Green helped produce the first order of the Neanderthal genome.
Four years later, Joshua Genetic experts wrote a paper showing that modern humans carry some Neanderthal DNA remains.
Since then, scientists continue to purify the techniques to extract and analyze genetic materials from fossils.
“Better tools allow us to ask more detailed questions about human history and evolution,” said Akey, who is now in Princeton and is not involved in new research.
He praised the new study methodology.
However, Alan Templeton, a population geneticist at Washington University in St.
Louis, asked the author’s assumption that changes in the human genome were randomly distributed, instead of gathering around certain hotspots in the genome.
These findings underline “that we are actually a very young species,” said Aey.
“It’s not for a long time, we share a planet with other human lineages.”