Deciphering the DNA Code of Neanderthal Man

smooth wombat writes "U.S. and German scientists have embarked on a two-year long project to map the genetic code of Neanderthal man. Their hope is to gain a greater understanding of how modern human brains evolved. This study comes after last years completion of mapping the DNA of chimpanzees, our closest living relative." From the article: "Over two years, the scientists aim to reconstruct a draft of the 3 billion building blocks of the Neanderthal genome -- working with fossil samples from several individuals. They face the complication of working with 40,000-year-old samples, and of filtering out microbial DNA that contaminated them after death. Only about 5 percent of the DNA in the samples is actually Neanderthal DNA, Egholm estimated, but he and Rothberg said pilot experiments had convinced them that the decoding was feasible."

Re:I wish they would instead do something more use

[Bryansix]

and if they do try to "spin" something that isn't so, all the evolutionary biologists, being at no loss for evidence by any stretch of the imagination, will immediately climb all over each other to tear them to pieces for the purpose of increased visibility in the field.

Just like they did with the Piltdown Man [wikipedia.org]?

Details

[Raindance]

Here's some background that isn't apparent from the article. The CNN piece talks about Neanderthals in the context of understanding brain evolution, but the million dollar question- in most scientists' minds- is whether Neanderthals and early modern humans interbred, after 500,000 years of separation. It seems at least possible: lions and tigers produce fertile offspring and they diverged 2 million years ago. As the New York Times states [nytimes.com],

        "A longstanding dispute among archaeologists is whether the modern humans who first entered Europe 45,000 years ago, ultimately from Africa, interbred with the Neanderthals or forced them into extinction. Interbreeding could have been genetically advantageous to the incoming humans, says Bruce Lahn, a geneticist at the University of Chicago, because the Neanderthals were well adapted to the cold European climate -- the last ice age had another 35,000 years to run -- and to local diseases.

        Evidence from the human genome suggests some interbreeding with an archaic species, Dr. Lahn said, which could have been Neanderthals or other early humans."

Now, nobody really knows much at this point. But something that I found interesting was that, via John Hawks [johnhawks.net], "Neandertals will be within the human range of variation for most genes." And the "pilot experiments" Rothberg mentioned is a reference to how their team sequenced the DNA of the cave bear as a test-run. As I understand it this was mostly to convince museums that grinding up some of their prize Neanderthal fossils in the name of research was a good idea. :)

Re:I wish they would instead do something more use

[Bowling Moses]

There currently are efforts underway to clone the wooly mammoth, which you can read about in the National Geographic [nationalgeographic.com]

You can read about neanderthals from a number of different sites, wikipedia [wikipedia.org] has a pretty decent page, as does talkorigins [talkorigins.org] on hominid evolution in general. Reconstructing the neanderthal genome will be of great interest to science and medicine. Based on the morphology of the fossil remains and their location chronologically, evolution makes some very specific predictions about what that reconstructed genome should look like. It should be highly similar to modern H. sapiens sapiens, much more so than the couple of percent difference between our genome and chimps. If it isn't, then the theory of evolution has a very bad problem. There will not be any spin about it one way or another from the scientific community--just facts and reasonable interpretation. The neanderthal genome, if reconstructed, will also be informative on some issues such as whether or not they interbreed with H. sapiens sapiens, time of divergence with the same, and may also provide highly detailed information about their ability to speak and possibly higher brain function, which will likely be of medical interest.

No, what'll be more "histericcal" is how leading Intelligent Design pushers/Creationists will spin yet another blow to their superstition.

Pigmy chimp

[booch]

The closest living relative to human beings is not the common chimpanzee. It's the bonobo [wikipedia.org], also known as the pigmy chimpanzee. Interesting creatures, with even more interesting sex lives.

Re:Pigmy chimp

[bcrowell]

The closest living relative to human beings is not the common chimpanzee. It's the bonobo,
Nope. Chimps and bonobos form a clade together, and their common ancestor split off from our branch at the same time.

Explanation

[brian0918]

".. they lived almost exclusively on a diet of roast duck with mango salsa."

For those of you unAmerican types, or anyone who doesn't watch much TV, this is from a Geico auto insurance commercial [youtube.com].