First draft of Neandertal genome unveiled

A rough draft of the Neandertal genome confirms that modern humans and Neandertals shared a speech-related gene, and may soon reveal more about our kinship with our closest evolutionary cousins.

Evolutionary geneticist Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and colleagues said their first draft contains nearly 63% of the Neandertal genome. Looking at individual genes, the team hopes to "home in on the differences that might have made a difference to our ancestors" as Neandertals and modern humans diverged genetically about 800,000 years ago.

Neandertals were the closest relatives of currently living humans. They lived in Europe and parts of Asia until they became extinct about 30,000 years ago. For more than a hundred years, palaeontologists and anthropologists have been striving to uncover their evolutionary relationship to modern humans, who emerged roughly 400,000 years ago.

"Getting the genome of our closest living relative is a critical research goal because it will allow us to make key genomic comparisons," said Brooks Hanson, deputy managing editor for the physical sciences at the journal Science, published by AAAS. "Being able to look at some of the recent evolution of humans by comparing Neandertal DNA with modern humans as well as other species will shed light on both our own origins and the process of evolution."

Pääbo, a pioneer in the field of ancient DNA research, made the first contribution to the understanding of our genetic relationship to Neandertals when he sequenced Neandertal mitochondrial DNA in 1997.