"The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, shows "that whenever Neanderthals and modern humans have mated, there has been a preference for male Neanderthals and female modern humans, as opposed to the other way around," said author Alexander Platt, who studies genetics at the University of Pennsylvania."
"Scientists know that Neanderthals and humans mated because there is a small but important percentage of Neanderthal DNA in most modern humans outside of sub-Saharan Africa - including genes that can help us fight some diseases and make us more susceptible to others."
"In particular, there is a surprising lack of Neanderthal DNA in the human X chromosome, one of the bundles of genes in each cell known as a sex chromosome, compared with the amount of Neanderthal DNA in the other, non-sex chromosomes in the cell."
Tens of thousands of years ago, humans and Neanderthals interbred when living in overlapping regions. A new genetic study published in Science reveals that these pairings occurred more frequently between female humans and male Neanderthals rather than the opposite combination. Evidence of this interbreeding exists in modern human DNA outside sub-Saharan Africa, which contains a small percentage of Neanderthal genetic material. However, Neanderthal DNA is not evenly distributed across the human genome. Notably, the X chromosome contains surprisingly little Neanderthal DNA compared to other chromosomes. Scientists initially hypothesized this disparity resulted from harmful genes being filtered out through evolution, but alternative explanations remain under investigation.
#neanderthal-human-interbreeding #genetic-analysis #ancient-dna-distribution #x-chromosome-anomaly #population-genetics
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