A high-coverage Neandertal genome from Vindija Cave in Croatia

By Kay Prüfer, Cesare de Filippo, Steffi Grote, F. Mafessoni, P. Korlević, M. Hajdinjak, Benjamin Vernot, Laurits Skov, Pinghsun Hsieh, Stéphane Peyrégne and 26 more. Science, 2017

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Revelations from a Vindija Neandertal genome Neandertals clearly interbred with the ancestors of non-African modern humans, but many questions remain about our closest ancient relatives. Prüfer et al. present a 30-fold-coverage genome sequence from 50,000- to 65,000-year-old samples from a Neandertal woman found in Vindija, Croatia, and compared this sequence with genomes obtained from the Altai Neandertal, the Denisovans, and ancient and modern humans (see the Perspective by Bergström and Tyler-Smith). Neandertals likely lived in small groups and had lower genetic diversity than modern humans. The findings increase the number of Neandertal variants identified within populations of modern humans, and they suggest that a larger number of phenotypic and diseaserelated variants with Neandertal ancestry remain in the modern Eurasian gene pool than previously thought. Science, this issue p. 655; see also p. 586 A second deep-sequenced Neandertal genome reveals more about Neandertals and their relationships with ancient humans. To date, the only Neandertal genome that has been sequenced to high quality is from an individual found in Southern Siberia. We sequenced the genome of a female Neandertal from ~50,000 years ago from Vindija Cave, Croatia, to ~30-fold genomic coverage. She carried 1.6 differences per 10,000 base pairs between the two copies of her genome, fewer than present-day humans, suggesting that Neandertal populations were of small size. Our analyses indicate that she was more closely related to the Neandertals that mixed with the ancestors of present-day humans living outside of sub-Saharan Africa than the previously sequenced Neandertal from Siberia, allowing 10 to 20% more Neandertal DNA to be identified in present-day humans, including variants involved in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations, schizophrenia, and other diseases.

Subfields: Anthropology, Archeology, Genetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/987553bf20e69819b8e0f7b09bc092f91dce57f9