A Neandertal Perspective on Human Origins

In 2010, the first draft version of the Neandertal genome revealed that Neandertal have contributed genetic material to present-day humans living outside Africa. Recently, we have completed a genome sequence of high quality of a Neandertal individual and also of a Denisovan individual, representing a hitherto unknown Asian group related to Neandertals. These genomes reveal that up to about 2.0% of the genomes of people in Eurasia derive from Neandertals while about 4.8% of the genomes of people living in Oceania derive from Denisovans. I will discuss what is currently known about the functional consequences of the Neandertal inheritance in present-day humans. I will also describe how the Neandertal genome allows novel genomic features that appeared in present-day humans since their divergence from the Neandertal lineage to be identified and discuss how they may be functionally analyzed in the future.