A skull found in a previously undisturbed cave in Israel may hold important new evidence not just about when modern humans migrated out of Africa, but also when and where they crossed paths and may have mixed with our ancient cousins, the Neanderthals, according to a paper published last month by scientists ...
Tag: neanderthal
December 26, 2014
Top Genetic Findings of 2014
The pace of discovery in genetics is such that every few months a new finding has the potential to change something fundamental about our understanding of the science. To keep up, we here at 23andMe take a moment to look back and list the top genetic findings of the year. • Ebola DNA As health workers ...
October 23, 2014
Dem Bones
Svante Pääbo and his team in Leipzig are up to it again, sequencing a 45,000 year-old leg bone found on a riverban in Siberia and revealing more detail about interbreeding between modern humans and our early human cousins, the Neanderthals. No stranger to extracting ancient DNA, Pääbo, the director of ...
August 28, 2014
Neanderthal Fade Away
Neanderthals, our ancient cousins whose DNA is still found in traces in modern humans, faded away in Europe about 10,000 years earlier than scientists once thought, according to a new study by researchers at Oxford. Using an improved method for radiocarbon dating, the researchers took samples from about ...
July 11, 2014
Breathless Over New Finding Using Ancient DNA
With one very important exception Tibetans and their Han Chinese neighbors are genetically very similar, but that one difference makes all the difference. In the breathlessly thin air of the Himalayas, Tibetans have a genetic variant that makes them keenly well adapted to living on the “roof of the world.” ...
May 30, 2014
A Conversation With 23andMe’s Eric Durand
This interview is part of an occasional series of profiles introducing you to the people behind 23andMe’s compelling research. Eric Durand has been instrumental in developing several ancestry features at 23andMe including tools that allow customers to see their Neanderthal percentage and to use to see what ...
May 14, 2014
Neanderthals And Modern Humans
BioCentury This Week has done a nice series of interviews with Svante Pääbo, the director of evolutionary genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who was also the first to decode the Neanderthal genome. The interview is broken up into a series of short video ...
March 25, 2014
A Gift To Humanity
Here at 23andMe we have an interest in all things Neanderthal, so when none other than Svante Pääbo authored the book Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes we had to check it out. Professor Pääbo, the director of evolutionary genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in ...
February 3, 2014
23andMe Looks Back One More Time
In honor of the Chinese New Year, we’re taking one last look at the genetic milestones of 2013. From a Supreme Court ruling on patenting genes, to Angelina Jolie’s bold revelations about her genetic risk for breast cancer, to the FDA ordering 23andMe to stop offering health results pending a regulatory ...
January 29, 2014
More Neanderthal
Scientists at the University of Washington’s Department of Genome Sciences, report that they can zero in on remnant Neanderthal DNA in modern humans, identifying specific regions in our genome where that ancient DNA resides, and they can do this even without access to actual Neanderthal DNA samples from ...
Recent Comments