Science Focus ( Issue 21)

Human From the Neander Valley Sharply distinguished by our unique mode of cognition, we humans possess intellectual capacity that are incomparable to most living organisms, and were scientif ical ly named Homo sapiens , which impl ies “wise man” in Lat in. Yet, there was once a species who shared a surprisingly s i m i l a r appea rance w i t h us, and managed to create tool s for domestic uses such as sharpened spears to ki l l animals for food [1]. They are described as our s i s te r s pec i es and our di s tant relat ive, whose major specimen was f i r s t di scovered in 18 56 i n t he Neande r Va l l ey i n Ge r ma n y. A n t h r o p o l o g i s t s t h e r e f o r e n a m e t h e m H o m o n ea nde r t h a l e n s i s , meaning “human from the Neander Valley” [2]. Spotlight on the Pioneer – Svante Pääbo Pa l eogen e t i c s i s the field of studying the past by recover ing and analyz ing the preser ved genetic material in ancient organisms. Over the last four decades, Prof. Svante Pääbo has revolutionized our understanding of human evolutionary history [3]. As the Director of the Department of Evolutionary Genet ics at the Max Planck Inst i tute for Evolutionar y Anthropology, Prof. Svante Pääbo was the pioneer who adopted the cutting-edge next-generation sequencing technology in paleogenetics and contr ibuted to overcome the technical obstacles encountered [4]. In 2002, his team published a paper on the evolution of the gene FOXP2, which sparked wide interest in its possible role on the ability of humans to articulate speech and develop language [5, 6]. In 2006, he initiated a project to sequence the entire Neanderthal genome; a draft sequence was eventually published in May 2010 [7]. In March 2010, he identified an extinct human species, Denisovan, which was previously unknown [8]. These contr ibutions have profound influence on our understanding of human evolution and our ancient relatives. Legacy From Neanderthals in Our DNA Wi th the th ree b i l l i on - l et te r Neande r tha l genome first sequenced in 2010, it was revealed that Neanderthal DNA is approximately 99.7% identical to modern human DNA [6]. Close phylogenet ic relationships between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis , where the two species shared a common ancestor 400,000 to 700,000 years ago, can be concluded by genomic calculations and fossi l record [9-11]. Most striking of all, by looking into the genomes of five present-day humans from different continents, 2% of the non-African modern human genome was proven inherited from Neanderthals, whereas no Neanderthal DNA could be found in the genomes of the two Africans [9]. Despite of the limited sample size, the result seems to support the famous “out-of-Africa” model, a hypothesis which suggests Africa as the single location for the origin of genus Homo . It is believed By Sirius Lee 李揚