what does it mean to have strong neanderthal dna
I accept less back hair than most people, it seems, and I tin can give thanks my Neanderthal ancestors for that.
I also don't sneeze after I swallow dark chocolate — patently at that place are some people who do that — and I am only the teensiest bit taller than I might otherwise have been, thanks to an inherited stretch of Homo sapiens Neanderthalensis Dna.
Genetic tests are providing endless hours of amusement for consumers this year. Well-nigh give a general geographical background that probably comes every bit little surprise to people who shell out the $100 or more than to take the tests. One, marketed by 23andMe, takes you dorsum even farther — to Neanderthal ancestors.
"The scientific discipline has been around long enough that anybody has purchase-in that at that place is that trivial bit of mixture in u.s. that ties in to Neanderthals," said Larry Brody of the National Human Genome Inquiry Institute, one of the National Institutes of Health.
Neanderthals thrived in Europe from 350,000 to virtually 40,000 years ago, just disappeared after early modern humans showed up from Africa.
Scientists were surprised when researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany first managed to tease DNA from Neanderthal bones in 1997 and even more surprised when it was later linked to living, modern humans.
People of European, Asian and Australasian origin all accept at least some Neanderthal Deoxyribonucleic acid, merely not people of purely African descent. That's because Neanderthals arose in Europe after pre-humans left the African continent and obviously never fabricated their way back southward.
The discoveries have upended our agreement of what information technology means to be human, and accelerated a revolution in modern attitudes towards these people who lived in Europe and mingled — obviously on very intimate levels — with mod humans.
"They are humans."
"One of the things that this study tries to do is dispel the myths effectually Neanderthals," said Robin Smith, a senior product manager at 23andMe.
"At that place are these cavern-men stereotypes," Smith added. Neanderthals were frequently portrayed as hairy and brutish-looking, but examinations of their bones and, subsequently, Deoxyribonucleic acid shows that'south non accurate.
"They weren't actually shorter," Smith said. "They weren't more than or less hairy. At that place were some differences in terms of their skeletons — prominent brow ridges and protruding noses and whatnot — but they may not accept been that different from united states of america in reality."
Add to this studies that show Neanderthals fabricated cave art, wore and traded jewelry and used plants as medicine, and you get a picture of sensitive humans who were not very different from the modern Homo sapiens who took over from them.
"They are humans," Smith said.
So what does their DNA tell u.s.a. about ourselves?
Non a huge amount — nonetheless. "This is a fun, interesting piece of information about yourself," said Alisa Lehman, a senior production scientist at 23andMe.
"One of the Neanderthal markers will tell you things similar your propensity to become addicted to smoking if you commencement," said Brianna Pobiner of the Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins plan.
Clearly, that did non evolve in a time of cigarettes. "Neanderthals didn't fume, just for some of these genetic markers, they either had a role in Neanderthals that is different from the function that we have today, or they are next to some other factor that has a function today," Pobiner said. In genetics, as in so much of life, neighborhood counts.
One that's more important affects blood. "There is a genetic variant that leads to a high propensity for blood clotting," Pobiner said.
"That is incredibly inconvenient for modern humans that sit at our desks all the time and don't do." It'southward a leading crusade of strokes and blood clots in the legs, for instance.
"But for Neanderthals living in cold areas of Europe, coming into contact with dangerous animals all the fourth dimension as they were hunting them, being able to speedily clot blood when you got a cutting could make the difference between life and death."
Neanderthal DNA appears to alive on in our immune systems, as well, especially when information technology comes to resisting infections. Neanderthal ancestors also passed forth some traits for sleeping patterns, mood, and skin tone and hair colour, research shows.
Pobiner said she inherited a Neanderthal gene associated with directly pilus, although she says her hair is non, in fact, stick-straight.
Team members at 23andMe are crowdsourcing the information they get from customers to build upward their own profile of Neanderthal Dna in modern humans.
"23andMe tests for Neanderthal ancestry at i,436 markers scattered across the genome," the company explains on its client website.
"At each of these markers you can have a genetic variant that evolved in Neanderthals and came dorsum into the human lineage when the two groups interbred. Because you inherit variants from both of your parents, you tin have 0, i, or two copies of the Neanderthal variant at each marker."
My written report indicates I have 294 Neanderthal variations, including, thankfully, ii copies of the gene that reduces my tendency to have a hairy back.
While the 23andMe database has turned upward more than 1,400 genetic changes that date back to Neanderthal times, the company has only identified four that confer traits.
"Whether you have straight or curly pilus, whether you are probable to sneeze after eating dark chocolate, dorsum hair, top — those are the four we found so far," Smith said.
"Most of the Neanderthal DNA in our bodies, we don't know what it does. Nearly of information technology may non do anything at all."
While humans have most 20,000 genes that confer traits, most of our genetic lawmaking is not organized into genes. Some of it influences genes, turning them on or off and affecting genetic function.
Smith said the sneezing-after-chocolate trait turned upward randomly and he has no thought if it serves any purpose. "It is a trait information technology affects about 3 percent of people," he said.
"If I had a time machine, I would dear to go back and see a mod human being-Neanderthal interaction."
None of the traits would be visible to people looking at you, Brody said. For instance, the Neanderthal gene variation associated with height influences about 0.1 inch. At to the lowest degree 300 different genes bear on height, Brody said.
And then how did these Neanderthal genes go into mod humans?
"If I had a time machine, I would love to go dorsum and see a modern human-Neanderthal interaction," Pobiner said. "These were two different species yet they clearly recognized each other every bit like enough that individuals mated with each other on multiple occasions over fourth dimension and beyond space."
Source: https://www.today.com/health/how-much-neanderthal-dna-do-humans-have-what-does-it-t126372
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