LEIPZIG, Germany — Researchers in Germany have completed the first draft of the Neanderthal genome, more than 3 billion genetic building blocks that will shed new light on the ancient hominid as well as the origins of its closest relation — modern humans.
Geneticist Svante Paabo, the team leader, said the Neanderthal genome will be an important tool for researchers tracing hominid evolution, and for those probing the origins of the genetic traits that make humans so dominant.
"It will help show what the differences are between them and us that allowed us to develop technology, to colonize the planet," he told The Associated Press on Thursday before presenting his findings to an American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago by video uplink from Leipzig.
The announcement coincided with the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth.
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Gene expert Edward Rubin of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., who is leading a separate project to sequence targeted segments of the Neanderthal genome, said his work has shown that the Neanderthal genome is as much as 99.5 percent the same as that of modern humans.
Other researchers are already planning comparative studies with genes known to influence speech and brain aging in humans. That work could rekindle a debate over whether early humans simply replaced Neanderthals, or whether the two may have interbred while their ranges overlapped in Europe more than 30,000 years ago.
Paabo presented DNA evidence in 1997 that Neanderthals were cousins rather than ancestors of modern humans. He said his research suggests that if there was mixing between Neanderthals and modern humans, it has left minuscule traces in our genome. But he believes the new Neanderthal genome might let researchers investigate whether earlier human genes were passed to the Neanderthal.
"We're currently analyzing if we see evidence in the Neanderthal genome of contribution from human ancestors," Paabo said. "That question I think is still totally open."
