How Neanderthal Left Their Mark on Human Beings
It seems that some people contain a small amount of Neanderthal DNA. Pacific Island dwellers have Denisovans DNA while many others have other genes. Dr. Joshua Akey finds the area fascinating and accepts that it is going to be a hard journey to determine the extent of the differences between Neanderthals, Denisovans, and humans.
It seems that some people contain a small amount of Neanderthal DNA. Pacific Island dwellers have Denisovans DNA while many others have other genes. Dr. Joshua Akey finds the area fascinating and accepts that it is going to be a hard journey to determine the extent of the differences between Neanderthals, Denisovans, and humans.
There is not a great deal of information held on the DNA of Denisovans, and there has only been knowledge of their existence for the last ten years. Part of the bone from a finger was found in Northern Siberian cave and as a result of the analysis carried out it was discovered that there are only a few people who have more than a slight amount of their DNA connected.
READ ALSO: Eight Percent of Our DNA is Non-Human
As Oceania and Siberia are a great distance apart, it is wondered how there has been a connection with humans. There has been debate surrounding it according to Dr. Akey when he was speaking to BBC News. It is suspected that there was a meeting in South East Asia, and then there was movement and settlement on the islands that are north of Australia. This is in contrast with humans and Neanderthals who often met across Eurasia, and their DNA lives on in the latest generations.
Non-Africans carry up to 4% of genomes from Neanderthals according to research from Svante Paabo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. According to Benjamin Vernot from the University of Washington Denisovans and Neanderthals travelled and we can now discover where they went.
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Daniel Okafor
Daniel Okafor is the Senior AI Reporter at TrendinTech, where he covers large language models, machine learning research and the practical use of artificial intelligence across business and government. He previously reported on artificial intelligence for MIT Technology Review, covering the labs behind the current generation of frontier models and the policy debates in Washington and Brussels. Daniel holds a Master of Science in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University and follows the research community closely, attending NeurIPS and ICML each year to speak with the people behind the papers. He has a particular interest in evaluation: how models are benchmarked, where those benchmarks fail and what that means for the companies betting on them.
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