DNA sequencing of Neanderthal genome has provided evidence that Neanderthals and humans may have interbred. The 40,000 year old DNA was was decoded by Svante Pääbo, a palaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany. The researchers manged to decode about two thirds of the genome in duplicate.
The team also compared the Neanderthal DNA to genomes form various human populations including French, Chinese, Papua New Guinean, and San. They found fragments of Neanderthal DNA in all modern human populations except those descended from African populations. As Neanderthals only lived in Europe and the Middle East this finding suggests that Neanderthals and human interbred some 45,000 years in the past.
Although none of the Neanderthal DNA contributed to expressed genes in modern humans comparison of the two Homo genomes with those of chimpanzees may reveal uniquely human traits that arose after the human/Neanderthal split and provided an evolutionary advantage to early humans. This was a crucial time in the evolution of humans and any discoveries in this area will be fascinating.
So with everyone of European, Asian, American, or Polynesian descent having 1-4% Neanderthal DNA in their genomes, this means that Africans are now the most racially 'pure' population. I wonder what white supremacists would have to say about that?
Richard E. Green, Johannes Krause, Adrian W. Briggs, Tomislav Maricic, Udo Stenzel, Martin Kircher, et al. A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome. Science, 2010; 328 (5979): 710-722 DOI: 10.1126/science.1188021
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