For the first time, scientists have sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of a Neanderthal. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, analyzed the genetic material from a 38,000-year-old leg bone found in Croatia and published their findings today in Cell.
The mitochondria are only passed down the female line, so can be used to trace the species back to an ancestral “Eve”, the mother of all Neanderthals. The team analysed the DNA of 13 genes from the Neanderthal mitochondria and found they were distinctly different to modern humans, suggesting Neanderthals never, or rarely, interbred with early humans. The genetic material shows that a Neanderthal “Eve” lived around 660,000 years ago, when the species last shared a common ancestor with humans [Guardian].
It’s difficult to know exactly when one species diverges into two—the sceintists estimated their date by comparing the Neanderthal DNA to that of modern humans, chimps, and bonobos. Starting with the commonly-held idea that chimps and humans diverged six to eight million years ago, and factoring in the rate of mitochondrial DNA evolution, the team dated Neanderthal separation from humans back 660,000 years.
According to John Hawks, a University of Wisconsin-Madison biologist not involved in the study, the work further dispels the idea that modern humans are closely related to Neanderthals. “Comparing the complete mitochondrial DNA genomes of a Neandertal and many recent humans presents a very different picture,” Hawks says. “Humans are all more similar to each other, than any human is to a Neandertal. And in fact the Neandertal sequence is three or more times as different, on average, from us as we are from each other” [Science News].
However, much remains to be learned about Neanderthal DNA: The mitochondrion – a structure often dubbed the cell’s powerhouse – contains a mere 16,565 DNA letters that code for 13 proteins, whereas the nucleus holds more than 3 billion letters that produce more than 20,000 proteins [New Scientist]. Still, study leader Richard Green says he hopes to be well on the way to a complete Neanderthal genome by year’s end.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/Thomas Ihle
August 11th, 2008 at 2:35 am
Keep up the great work!
August 12th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
I don’t know. Sometimes I see people who have very small foreheads where the difference between their eyebrows and their hairline is relatively small compared to most people. Many have heavy eyebrow bones also. They look sort of like they might have some Neanderthal genes in them.
August 14th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
They could not interbreed, they were hermaphrodites. Read my blog for more information, www.cicatrices.com.mx. You may communicate with me at frocham@yahoo.com
August 18th, 2008 at 10:23 am
It’s just flabbergastingly amazing, the things we can learn with gene sequencing nowadays. Maybe in a few more years we can bring the Neandertals back, scientifically. As for their appearance, hey! Give him a flannel shirt and an black Gibson guitar, and presto it’s Neil Young!
September 21st, 2008 at 11:13 pm
If interbreeding did occur, wouldn’t be possible to see the evidence reflected in differences in the the DNA of modern humans — i.e., between those descended from Neanderthal and those that were not? If this evidence cannot be demonstrated, why not?
September 28th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
?The team analysed (sic) the DNA of 13 genes from the Neanderthal mitochondria??
What about the other 35000 genes?
http://darwinsalbatross.blogspot.com/2007/05/nebraska-man.html
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I kinda resemble a neanderthal. To begin im half slavic, half black. My slavic father has all the same “abnormalities” as i do, but exaggerated. I got a real prominent, protruding and low brow ridge (unibrow too), a sloped forehead with a big lump in the back (my forehead/head loosk just like the picture above), as much hair on my upper arms as on my lower arms (check real quick - this aint normal), and I’ve never been able to throw as well as my peers even tho ive been just as interested in sports as them. My facial hair connects to my eyebrows (thinly but surely if you look close) , and my back is naturally slightly hunched. My arm span is 5 or 6 inches longer than my height. My feet turn outwards and my thighs slightly inwards, so my knees bend awkwardly.
Are any of these PROVEN neanderthal traits? Or did i just get unlucky?
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:15 pm
England UK. My (male) arms seem unusually very strong in the ski-ing type of movement. (I also have (seemingly relatedly) strong shoulders. & fairly hirsute upper body). Perhaps bipedalism alone may not offer sufficient explanations? Could Skis or similar have been invented & used amongst earlier humans? Possibly a neanderthal trait? Earlier humans intelligence translated not only into tools, but also into assisted locomotion? Across ice/ski-ing? Over long periods of time? Sufficient for a physical trait like that to develop? My guess is we may all currently be one human species, but I’m also unsure how all human lineages/dna could be traced back for sure to exclude potentially varying ancestries.
October 8th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
3 times the difference between neanderthal and different humans…, over 30 thousand years since neanderthals died out. I would think that even if there was limited interbreeding that there might be some rare individuals that would have some neanderthal dna in such a case. If there was limited interbreeding 30 to 40 thousand years ago the dna might not be across the board in our modern human genetics, but still might be in some human dna. Just something to consider.
October 12th, 2008 at 11:50 am
interbreeding between species of divergent dna would likely result in sterility. e.g. horse + donkey = sterile mule Tiger + lion = sterile Liger et al…
November 29th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
It’s obvious through other studies among human populations (take Tasmania, for example) that Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (what we call “us”), because of their lack of geographic isolation, most likely would not have been isolated enough to become to completely separate species. To create a mule, species must be isolated for about 2 million years, making Neanderthals less distinct than most would hope for. What differences we account for between Neanderthals and amh is probably regional differences and cold adaptation. I don’t think we know enough about DNA to even make these assumptions. Also, I think there’s a direct bias to Neanderthals (read the title! my gosh!) because people want to feel superior and “different” from people that no longer live today, even if they were our ancestors. We want Neanderthals to be stupid cavemen, not potentially comparable beings.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:06 am
Perhaps when humans bread with neandrathals they produced a hybred like a mule that could not reproduce. These human mules left no offspring.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
the results do not completly rule out the interbreding: only the complete decoding of the dna contained in the nucleus will allow to exclude that modern humans have Neandertal ’s genes.After all, the Mungo man is anatomically a sapiens like us but his mitocondrial dna is very different ; that simply means that working just with mitocondrial dna das not bring compelling evidences of anything
January 3rd, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I thought about that possibility of some interbreeding between Neaderthal and Homosapiens over those thousand’s of years of co-existance and the probabilities would be high enough for it to occur.
However the probability of an off spring from 2 different DNA structures would be very unlikely. If the DNA’s were close enough the offspring would be a hybrid and unable to propagate. So I concure with the results of the research. More then likely Homosapiens out thought the Neaderthals food supplies and led to an inevitable extinction. If one were to survive today we’d have as much in common with it as a Chimp in my opinion.
A hypothetical question would be, could the same be true if say we found another civilization somewhere in deep space. Would interbreeding be a possibility ? Some food for thought.