Still, additional genetic analyses have typically led researchers to conclude that Homo sapiens arose in Africa and replaced the archaic humans it encountered as it spread out from its birthplace without mingling with them.īut mingle they apparently did, according to the new study. Yet because mitochondrial DNA represents only a tiny fraction of an individual’s genetic makeup, the possibility remained that Neandertal nuclear DNA might tell a different story. Their analysis revealed that Neandertals had not made any contributions to modern mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondria are the cell’s energy-generating organelles, and they have their own DNA, which is distinct from the much longer DNA sequence that resides in the cell’s nucleus. In 1997 he and his colleagues sequenced the first Neandertal mitochondrial DNA.
The finding contrasts sharply with Pääbo's previous work. But when the researchers conducted additional analyses, the results all pointed to the same conclusion. “We as a consortium came into this with a very, very strong bias against gene flow,” added team member David Reich of Harvard University. “First I thought it was some kind of statistical fluke,” Pääbo remarked during a press teleconference on May 5. The evidence that Neandertals contributed DNA to modern humans came as a shock to the investigators. The researchers detail their analysis of the sequence in the May 7 Science. Researchers sequencing Neandertal DNA have concluded that between 1 and 4 percent of the DNA of people today who live outside Africa came from Neandertals, the result of interbreeding between Neandertals and early modern humans.Ī team of scientists led by Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig pieced together the first draft of the sequence-which represents about 60 percent of the entire genome-using DNA obtained from three Neandertal bones that come from Vindija cave in Croatia and are more than 38,000 years old.
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