First draft of 38,000 year-old Neanderthal is complete

Svante Pääbo, Director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig Germany has announced that he and his colleagues have completed a first draft of the Neanderthal genome. 

Addressing the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago, Pääbo stated that 3 billion base pairs of DNA - 60% of a Neanderthal's genome, and several million more pairs from three other individuals have now been sequenced. "This will be the first time the entire genome of an extinct organism has been sequenced," he told the audience.

In 1985, Pääbo made news when he isolated DNA from an Egyptian mummy.  By 2006, the necessary technology and methodology had progressed to the point where Pääbo and his team were able to make the stunning announcement that they had decoded fragments of Neanderthal DNA; including the FOX2P gene.  FOX2P is a gene which is present in modern humans - and appears to have a role to play in producing the ability to use language and speech.

Neanderthals co-existed with modern humans prior to being driven to extinction some 30,000 years ago

Early analysis of the Neanderthal genome seems to indicate that the extinct species contributed very little, if at all to modern humans through interbreeding. While further study will be required to come to a more firmly held conclusion, it would appear that certain genes which are well developed and present in modern humans are missing in Neanderthals - suggesting the absence of a link between us and them.

The ability to recover and sequence the DNA of early humans as well as our evolutionary 'cousins' will help evolutionary geneticists better understand the evolutionary tree from which modern humans arose, as well as the development and function of key genes in our DNA.

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