left As the Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo eight years ago, his bombshell began to guess the big mystery. Pääbo and an international Team had published its first draft of the deciphered the Neanderthal genome, and immediately it became clear that modern humans have up to three percent of the genes of your last extinct Relatives. Humans and Neanderthals had, therefore, had obviously Sex with each other.
The question now is: Do traces of the past affair, even today, in the people noticeable? There are even external features that reveal the heritage of the Neanderthals?
in fact, the genetic Remnants of the distant Relatives are reflected in some of the people in the shape of the head. The at least one current study by scientists from Germany and the Netherlands, which is published in the journal Current Biology.
slightly To the rear of the flat-topped head
The Team of the anthropologist Philipp Gunz from the Max-Planck-Institute for evolutionary anthropology in Leipzig and the neuro-geneticist Amanda Tilot, from the Max-Planck-Institute for psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the influence of inherited Neanderthal DNA in modern Genomes on the shape of the skull of more than 440 human contemporaries studied. Therefore, modern people who have these genetic fragments have länglicheren, in comparison, slightly, to the rear, slightly flattened head and a correspondingly differently shaped brain than people without the genetic material of the before 40 000 years extinct Relatives sections.
Whether the result produces differences in the neurological function of the respective brains, needs to be investigated in further studies. As Senior author Simon Fisher of the max Planck Institute in Nijmegen, however, compared to the science magazine emphasized, would be such differences probably rather marginal, the brain development will ultimately be controlled by a variety of genes. So it’s not about differences in intelligence.
Two genes explain why the brain of modern man is so striking about
The Neanderthal genome attenuates, but obviously, the implementation of two genes in neuronal development and might in turn explain why the brain of modern Homo-sapiens is not representative, in principle, so remarkable about. The genes in question URB4 and PHLPP1 mediate the production of nerve cells, insulating nerves wrappings in the rear area of the brain, which increases in humans after the birth. Newborns have, therefore, rather elongated, flat skull, the rounds within the first year of life.
among the new findings of the study, that scientists on the basis of modern genomes, the function of the sections of the Neanderthals-close genome and thereby also anatomical differences between the two human species can explain. As paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati of the University of Tübingen told the journal Science, this approach is, in particular, for the brain interesting, since the soft nervous tissue remains in fossil Remains of Neanderthals don’t get.
the authors of The new study have announced that they have been under the British UK Biobank for future studies to investigate other possible influences of the Neanderthal genome to brain development – and may also explain why the actually very large brains of this extinct Relatives of the human brain in the end. (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Created: 01.01.2019, 22:01 Uhr
