si tratta di un gene vero e proprio che codifica la proteina 11B formata da 267 amminoacidi (quindi funziona a triplette)
si tratta di un gene vero e proprio che codifica la proteina 11B formata da 267 amminoacidi (quindi funziona a triplette)
Corteccia cerebrale, migliaia di regolazioni geniche ci rendono umani - Le Scienze
anche questo è interessante
Il cervello umano è ancora in evoluzione - Le Scienze
senza dimenticare Bruce T. Lahn
chrome-search://thumb/2/8
hanno analizzato il DNA nucleare dei reperti di Sima de los huesos
Subscribe to Sequencing
Nuclear Genomic Analysis of 430,000-Year-Old Hominins Reveals Close Ties to Neanderthals
Mar 14, 2016
NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Sequencing and analysis of nuclear DNA from 430,000-year-old hominins uncovered in a cave in Spain has indicated that they are most closely related to Neanderthals, overturning previous mitochondrial DNA-based evidence that they were more like the archaic Denisovans from eastern Eurasia.
Using a specialized approach to handle samples of such age, researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology's Svante Pääbo sequenced nuclear DNA from five samples from the Sima de los Huesos hominins. As reported today in Nature, this suggested that the hominins were more closely related to Neanderthals than to Denisovans and that the population divergence between Neanderthals and Denisovans could be traced back further than 430,000 years.
"These results provide important anchor points in the timeline of human evolution," Pääbo said in a statement. "They are consistent with a rather early divergence of 550,000 to 750,000 years ago of the modern human lineage from archaic humans."
While the Sima de los Huesos hominins share derived dental and cranial morphological features with Neanderthals, Pääbo and his team reported in 2013 in Nature that their mitochondrial genomes were more like those found among Denisovans. At the time, they noted that this finding was unexpected not only because of those shared features between the Sima de los Huesos hominins and Neanderthals, but also because of Denisovans' more easterly range.
This led them to speculate that the Sima de los Huesos hominins might have shared ancestral ties with an ancestor common to both Neanderthals and Denisovans, or that gene flow from another group brought this mitochondrial DNA genome to both the Denisovan and Sima de los Huesos hominin populations.
To further examine the relationships among these ancient hominins, the researchers extracted nuclear DNA from five bone samples from the Spanish cave: an incisor, a part of a femur, a molar, a scapula, and the femur from which mitochondrial DNA had previously been obtained.
Due to the extreme age of the samples, the researchers generated between 600 million and 2.6 billion sequence reads, but then focused on the ones generated from libraries with the high number of terminal C-to-T substitutions and short fragments, both of which are hallmarks of ancient DNA. They also isolated mitochondrial DNA from the four new samples using hybridization capture.
To account for contamination from microbial and human sources, the researchers estimated the number of reads with C-to-T substitutions as well as the number of reads that contained genetic patterns diagnostic for humans.
They estimated that their samples contained between 76 percent and 98 percent contamination, but when they limited their analysis to fragments that contained evidence of deamination that level of contamination fell for all samples but the scapula.
Pääbo and his colleagues then compared these sequences to those from the Altai Neanderthal, the Denisovan finger bone, and a modern human from Africa to find spots in their genomes where they differed from chimpanzees and other primates. They then estimated the percentage of positions where the Sima de los Huesos hominins shared the derived state with Neanderthal, Denisovan, or human samples.
Based on this, the researchers found that the incisor and one of the femur samples shared between 68 percent and 87 percent of the derived alleles belonging to both Neanderthals and Denisovans, but between 39 percent and 43 percent of the derived alleles specific to Neanderthals and only between 7 percent and 9 percent of the ones specific to Denisovans.
This, they added, indicates that the Sima de los Huesos hominins are early Neanderthals or are closely related to the ancestors of Neanderthals, after they diverged from the ancestors of Denisovans.
Still, the mitochondrial DNA the researchers analyzed from the Sima de los Huesos hominins was more similar to Denisovan mitochondrial DNA
While the researchers noted that this discrepancy could be due to Sima de los Huesos hominins harboring divergent mitochondrial genomes or to a separate hominin group contributing it to both Denisovans and Sima de los Huesos hominins, they added that it could also be due to Neanderthals later acquiring a new mitochondrial genome through gene flow, possibly from Africa.
ma non dice niente di ARHGAP11B o di HAR1 e HARE5, nonché di FOXP2. ci sono solo percentuali di appartenenza all'uno o all'altro tipo di ominide. evidentemente le sequenze erano molto spezzettate e difficili da ricostruire. forse bisognerà attendere migliori tecniche di analisi e ricostruzione di sequenze. forse Ante Paabo ha fatto il suo tempo (è sulla breccia da trent'anni ...)
adesso mi guardo l'articolo originale
NATURE | LETTER
Share/bookmark
日本語要約
Nuclear DNA sequences from the Middle Pleistocene Sima de los Huesos hominins
Matthias Meyer, Juan-Luis Arsuaga, Cesare de Filippo, Sarah Nagel, Ayinuer Aximu-Petri, Birgit Nickel, Ignacio Martínez, Ana Gracia, José María Bermúdez de Castro, Eudald Carbonell, Bence Viola, Janet Kelso, Kay Prüfer & Svante Pääbo
AffiliationsContributionsCorresponding author
Nature 531, 504–507 (24 March 2016) doi:10.1038/nature17405
Received 16 September 2015 Accepted 02 February 2016 Published online 14 March 2016
Article tools
Citation
Rights & permissions
Article metrics
A unique assemblage of 28 hominin individuals, found in Sima de los Huesos in the Sierra de Atapuerca in Spain, has recently been dated to approximately 430,000 years ago1. An interesting question is how these Middle Pleistocene hominins were related to those who lived in the Late Pleistocene epoch, in particular to Neanderthals in western Eurasia and to Denisovans, a sister group of Neanderthals so far known only from southern Siberia. While the Sima de los Huesos hominins share some derived morphological features with Neanderthals, the mitochondrial genome retrieved from one individual from Sima de los Huesos is more closely related to the mitochondrial DNA of Denisovans than to that of Neanderthals2. However, since the mitochondrial DNA does not reveal the full picture of relationships among populations, we have investigated DNA preservation in several individuals found at Sima de los Huesos. Here we recover nuclear DNA sequences from two specimens, which show that the Sima de los Huesos hominins were related to Neanderthals rather than to Denisovans, indicating that the population divergence between Neanderthals and Denisovans predates 430,000 years ago. A mitochondrial DNA recovered from one of the specimens shares the previously described relationship to Denisovan mitochondrial DNAs, suggesting, among other possibilities, that the mitochondrial DNA gene pool of Neanderthals turned over later in their history.
A mitochondrial DNA recovered from one of the specimens shares the previously described relationship to Denisovan mitochondrial DNAs, suggesting, among other possibilities, that the mitochondrial DNA gene pool of Neanderthals turned over later in their history.
basta poco per interrompere il flusso di trasmissione del DNA mitocondriale (basta che qualcuna non abbia figlie femmine o non abbia proprio figli). per questo non sono tanto convinto "che tutti noi deriviamo da una (e solo una) Eva Mitocondriale". possibile, tutte perse fuori che quella unica Eva rimasta ? mi pare una balla pietosa per un'unica discendenza !
Accidenti quanto materiale, devo leggermelo con calma