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Origins Of Human: How The Neanderthals Influence The Modern Day Human (Video)

Alex Davis
First Posted: Nov 09, 2016 02:36 AM EST

The origins of human have been debated by many. Scientists today investigates on how the Neanderthals influence the genes of the modern day humans.

At about 30,000 years ago, the Neanderthals disappeared from the face of the Earth. But through DNA sequencing, they have lived among us in bits and pieces. As for the Neanderthals, DNA scatters among the modern-day human genes.

However, geneticists conducted a new study at the University of California revealed that slowly, the traces of Neanderthals are being removed by natural selection.

The study senior author from the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology and Center for Population Biology, Professor Graham Coop, said that "On average, there has been weak but widespread selection against Neanderthal genes .That selection seems to be a consequence of a small population of Neanderthals mixing with a much larger population of modern humans."

Now, the genes from Neanderthals left only a few percent in the European ancestry, but scientists found that the genes are most likely common East Asia people, and almost no traces of Neanderthals gene were found in the Africam ancestry, according to Voice of America.

Postdoctoral researchers Simon Aeschbacher and Ivan Juric worked together with Coop. The team created methods to measure the degree of the Neanderthal DNA natural selection in the human genome, according to Phys.Org.

The experts came to a hypothesis. They shared that Neanderthals might quickly become incompatible with the today's human, that the hybrid children are not adaptable to the evolutionary side, in which it is either not fertile or not able to thrive.

In line with this, the scientists also found that instead of revealing strong selection against a few Neanderthal genes, the experts found it to be weak. But widespread selection against many DNA of the Neanderthal sequences, it is slowly fading away from our genome. 

Graham Coop concluded that Neanderthals inbreeding in a confined population may have led the genetic variants to remain common given that it is sometimes harmful to a certain degree. Thus, when mixed with an adequate population, natural selection starts to operate those variants and remove them out.

 

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