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posted by martyb on Thursday November 10 2016, @05:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the weak-sauce dept.

Despite Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal interbreeding that has been detected using evidence from modern genomes, weak neanderthal genes are gradually being removed by natural selection, according to researchers:

The Neanderthals disappeared about 30,000 years ago, but little pieces of them live on in the form of DNA sequences scattered through the modern human genome. A new study by geneticists at the University of California, Davis, shows why these traces of our closest relatives are slowly being removed by natural selection.

"On average, there has been weak but widespread selection against Neanderthal genes," said Graham Coop, professor in the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology and Center for Population Biology, and senior author on a paper describing the work published Nov. 8 in the journal PLOS Genetics. That selection seems to be a consequence of a small population of Neanderthals mixing with a much larger population of modern humans.

[...] "The human population size has historically been much larger, and this is important since selection is more efficient at removing deleterious variants in large populations," Juric said. "Weakly deleterious variants that could persist in Neanderthals could not persist in humans. We think that this simple explanation can account for the pattern of Neanderthal ancestry that we see today along the genome of modern humans."

Juric I, Aeschbacher S, Coop G (2016) The Strength of Selection against Neanderthal Introgression. PLoS Genet 12(11): e1006340. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1006340


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  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday November 10 2016, @05:49PM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday November 10 2016, @05:49PM (#425210) Journal

    What does that taste like? I'm sure you can tell us in vivid, gory detail, AC.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10 2016, @09:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10 2016, @09:34PM (#425329)

    Why did you say that in a pejorative tone?

    What a racist, anti-Semitic homophobe you are!