Drafting Human Ancestry: What Does the Neanderthal Genome Tell Us about Hominid Evolution? Commentary on Green et al. (2010)

Ten years after the first draft versions of the human genome wereannounced, technical progress in both DNA sequencing and ancient DNAanalyses has allowed a research team around Ed Green and Svante Pa¨a¨bo tocomplete this task from infinitely more difficult hominid samples: a fewpieces of bone originating from our closest, albeit extinct, relatives, theNeanderthals. Pulling the Neanderthal sequences out of a sea of contaminatingenvironmental DNA impregnating the bones and at the same timeavoiding the problems of contamination with modern human DNA is in itselfa remarkable accomplishment. However, the crucial question in the long runis, what can we learn from such genomic data about hominid evolution? Pay-Per-View Download To access this article as a PDF pay-per-view download via BioOne, please click here