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Vallini L, Zampieri C, Shoaee MJ, Bortolini E, Marciani G, Aneli S, Pievani T, Benazzi S, Barausse A, Mezzavilla M, Petraglia MD, Pagani L. The Persian plateau served as hub for Homo sapiens after the main out of Africa dispersal. Nat Commun 2024; 15:1882. [PMID: 38528002 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-46161-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/05/2023] [Accepted: 02/16/2024] [Indexed: 03/27/2024] Open
Abstract
A combination of evidence, based on genetic, fossil and archaeological findings, indicates that Homo sapiens spread out of Africa between ~70-60 thousand years ago (kya). However, it appears that once outside of Africa, human populations did not expand across all of Eurasia until ~45 kya. The geographic whereabouts of these early settlers in the timeframe between ~70-60 to 45 kya has been difficult to reconcile. Here we combine genetic evidence and palaeoecological models to infer the geographic location that acted as the Hub for our species during the early phases of colonisation of Eurasia. Leveraging on available genomic evidence we show that populations from the Persian Plateau carry an ancestry component that closely matches the population that settled the Hub outside Africa. With the paleoclimatic data available to date, we built ecological models showing that the Persian Plateau was suitable for human occupation and that it could sustain a larger population compared to other West Asian regions, strengthening this claim.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Carlo Zampieri
- Department of Biology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
| | - Mohamed Javad Shoaee
- Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany
| | - Eugenio Bortolini
- Department of Cultural Heritage, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Giulia Marciani
- Department of Cultural Heritage, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
- Research Unit Prehistory and Anthropology, Department of Physical Sciences, Earth and Environment, University of Siena, Siena, Italy
| | - Serena Aneli
- Department of Public Health Sciences and Pediatrics, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
| | - Telmo Pievani
- Department of Biology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
| | - Stefano Benazzi
- Department of Cultural Heritage, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Alberto Barausse
- Department of Biology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
- Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
| | | | - Michael D Petraglia
- Human Origins Program, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 20560, USA
- School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
- Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
| | - Luca Pagani
- Department of Biology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy.
- Institute of Genomics, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia.
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2
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Hautavoine H, Arnaud J, Balzeau A, Mounier A. Quantifying hominin morphological diversity at the end of the middle Pleistocene: Implications for the origin of Homo sapiens. Am J Biol Anthropol 2024:e24915. [PMID: 38444398 DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.24915] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2023] [Revised: 12/25/2023] [Accepted: 01/28/2024] [Indexed: 03/07/2024]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES The Middle Pleistocene (MP) saw the emergence of new species of hominins: Homo sapiens in Africa, H. neanderthalensis, and possibly Denisovans in Eurasia, whose most recent common ancestor is thought to have lived in Africa around 600 ka ago. However, hominin remains from this period present a wide range of morphological variation making it difficult to securely determine their taxonomic attribution and their phylogenetic position within the Homo genus. This study proposes to reconsider the phenetic relationships between MP hominin fossils in order to clarify evolutionary trends and contacts between the populations they represent. MATERIALS AND METHODS We used a Geometric Morphometrics approach to quantify the morphological variation of the calvarium of controversial MP specimens from Africa and Eurasia by using a comparative sample that can be divided into 5 groups: H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapiens, as well as individuals from current modern human populations. We performed a Generalized Procrustes Analysis, a Principal Component Analysis, and Multinomial Principal Component Logistic Regressions to determine the phenetic affinities of the controversial Middle Pleistocene specimens with the other groups. RESULTS MP African and Eurasian specimens represent several populations, some of which show strong affinities with H. neanderthalensis in Europe or H. sapiens in Africa, others presenting multiple affinities. DISCUSSION These MP populations might have contributed to the emergence of these two species in different proportions. This study proposes a new framework for the human evolutionary history during the MP.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hugo Hautavoine
- PaléoFED, Histoire Naturelle de l'Homme Préhistorique (HNHP, UMR 7194), MNHN/CNRS/UPVD, Paris, France
| | - Julie Arnaud
- PaléoFED, Histoire Naturelle de l'Homme Préhistorique (HNHP, UMR 7194), MNHN/CNRS/UPVD, Paris, France
- Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy
| | - Antoine Balzeau
- PaléoFED, Histoire Naturelle de l'Homme Préhistorique (HNHP, UMR 7194), MNHN/CNRS/UPVD, Paris, France
- Département de Zoologie Africaine, Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren, Belgium
| | - Aurélien Mounier
- PaléoFED, Histoire Naturelle de l'Homme Préhistorique (HNHP, UMR 7194), MNHN/CNRS/UPVD, Paris, France
- Turkana Basin Institute, Nairobi, Kenya
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3
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Peyrégne S, Slon V, Kelso J. More than a decade of genetic research on the Denisovans. Nat Rev Genet 2024; 25:83-103. [PMID: 37723347 DOI: 10.1038/s41576-023-00643-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 07/19/2023] [Indexed: 09/20/2023]
Abstract
Denisovans, a group of now extinct humans who lived in Eastern Eurasia in the Middle and Late Pleistocene, were first identified from DNA sequences just over a decade ago. Only ten fragmentary remains from two sites have been attributed to Denisovans based entirely on molecular information. Nevertheless, there has been great interest in using genetic data to understand Denisovans and their place in human history. From the reconstruction of a single high-quality genome, it has been possible to infer their population history, including events of admixture with other human groups. Additionally, the identification of Denisovan DNA in the genomes of present-day individuals has provided insights into the timing and routes of dispersal of ancient modern humans into Asia and Oceania, as well as the contributions of archaic DNA to the physiology of present-day people. In this Review, we synthesize more than a decade of research on Denisovans, reconcile controversies and summarize insights into their population history and phenotype. We also highlight how our growing knowledge about Denisovans has provided insights into our own evolutionary history.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stéphane Peyrégne
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
| | - Viviane Slon
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
- Department of Anatomy and Anthropology, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
- Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
- The Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Janet Kelso
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
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4
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Wroblewski TH, Witt KE, Lee SB, Malhi RS, Peede D, Huerta-Sánchez E, Villanea FA, Claw KG. Pharmacogenetic Variation in Neanderthals and Denisovans and Implications for Human Health and Response to Medications. Genome Biol Evol 2023; 15:evad222. [PMID: 38051947 PMCID: PMC10727477 DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evad222] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/03/2023] [Revised: 11/08/2023] [Accepted: 11/16/2023] [Indexed: 12/07/2023] Open
Abstract
Modern humans carry both Neanderthal and Denisovan (archaic) genome elements that are part of the human gene pool and affect the life and health of living individuals. The impact of archaic DNA may be particularly evident in pharmacogenes-genes responsible for the processing of exogenous substances such as food, pollutants, and medications-as these can relate to changing environmental effects, and beneficial variants may have been retained as modern humans encountered new environments. However, the health implications and contribution of archaic ancestry in pharmacogenes of modern humans remain understudied. Here, we explore 11 key cytochrome P450 genes (CYP450) involved in 75% of all drug metabolizing reactions in three Neanderthal and one Denisovan individuals and examine archaic introgression in modern human populations. We infer the metabolizing efficiency of these 11 CYP450 genes in archaic individuals and find important predicted phenotypic differences relative to modern human variants. We identify several single nucleotide variants shared between archaic and modern humans in each gene, including some potentially function-altering mutations in archaic CYP450 genes, which may result in altered metabolism in living people carrying these variants. We also identified several variants in the archaic CYP450 genes that are novel and unique to archaic humans as well as one gene, CYP2B6, that shows evidence for a gene duplication found only in Neanderthals and modern Africans. Finally, we highlight CYP2A6, CYP2C9, and CYP2J2, genes which show evidence for archaic introgression into modern humans and posit evolutionary hypotheses that explain their allele frequencies in modern populations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tadeusz H Wroblewski
- Department of Biomedical Informatics, Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, Colorado, USA
| | - Kelsey E Witt
- Center for Human Genetics and Department of Genetics and Biochemistry, Clemson University, South Carolina, USA
| | - Seung-been Lee
- Precision Medicine Institute, Macrogen Inc., Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Ripan S Malhi
- Department of Anthropology and Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA
| | - David Peede
- Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology and Center for Computational and Molecular Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
- Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
| | - Emilia Huerta-Sánchez
- Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology and Center for Computational and Molecular Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
| | | | - Katrina G Claw
- Department of Biomedical Informatics, Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, Colorado, USA
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Ragsdale AP. Human evolution: Neanderthal footprints in African genomes. Curr Biol 2023; 33:R1197-R1200. [PMID: 37989099 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.10.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/23/2023]
Abstract
Human and Neanderthal populations met and mixed on multiple occasions over evolutionary time, resulting in the exchange of genetic material. New genomic analyses of diverse African populations reveal a history of bidirectional gene flow and selection acting on introgressed alleles.
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Affiliation(s)
- Aaron P Ragsdale
- Department of Integrative Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
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6
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Chevy ET, Huerta-Sánchez E, Ramachandran S. Integrating sex-bias into studies of archaic introgression on chromosome X. PLoS Genet 2023; 19:e1010399. [PMID: 37578977 PMCID: PMC10449224 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1010399] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/29/2022] [Revised: 08/24/2023] [Accepted: 07/10/2023] [Indexed: 08/16/2023] Open
Abstract
Evidence of interbreeding between archaic hominins and humans comes from methods that infer the locations of segments of archaic haplotypes, or 'archaic coverage' using the genomes of people living today. As more estimates of archaic coverage have emerged, it has become clear that most of this coverage is found on the autosomes- very little is retained on chromosome X. Here, we summarize published estimates of archaic coverage on autosomes and chromosome X from extant human samples. We find on average 7 times more archaic coverage on autosomes than chromosome X, and identify broad continental patterns in this ratio: greatest in European samples, and least in South Asian samples. We also perform extensive simulation studies to investigate how the amount of archaic coverage, lengths of coverage, and rates of purging of archaic coverage are affected by sex-bias caused by an unequal sex ratio within the archaic introgressors. Our results generally confirm that, with increasing male sex-bias, less archaic coverage is retained on chromosome X. Ours is the first study to explicitly model such sex-bias and its potential role in creating the dearth of archaic coverage on chromosome X.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elizabeth T. Chevy
- Center for Computational Molecular Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America
| | - Emilia Huerta-Sánchez
- Center for Computational Molecular Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America
- Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America
| | - Sohini Ramachandran
- Center for Computational Molecular Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America
- Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America
- Data Science Initiative, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America
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7
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Skov L, Coll Macià M, Lucotte EA, Cavassim MIA, Castellano D, Schierup MH, Munch K. Extraordinary selection on the human X chromosome associated with archaic admixture. Cell Genom 2023; 3:100274. [PMID: 36950386 PMCID: PMC10025451 DOI: 10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100274] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/27/2022] [Revised: 09/15/2022] [Accepted: 01/26/2023] [Indexed: 03/04/2023]
Abstract
The X chromosome in non-African humans shows less diversity and less Neanderthal introgression than expected from neutral evolution. Analyzing 162 human male X chromosomes worldwide, we identified fourteen chromosomal regions where nearly identical haplotypes spanning several hundred kilobases are found at high frequencies in non-Africans. Genetic drift alone cannot explain the existence of these haplotypes, which must have been associated with strong positive selection in partial selective sweeps. Moreover, the swept haplotypes are entirely devoid of archaic ancestry as opposed to the non-swept haplotypes in the same genomic regions. The ancient Ust'-Ishim male dated at 45,000 before the present (BP) also carries the swept haplotypes, implying that selection on the haplotypes must have occurred between 45,000 and 55,000 years ago. Finally, we find that the chromosomal positions of sweeps overlap previously reported hotspots of selective sweeps in great ape evolution, suggesting a mechanism of selection unique to X chromosomes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laurits Skov
- Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-5800, USA
| | - Moisès Coll Macià
- Bioinformatics Research Centre, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Elise Anne Lucotte
- Ecologie Systématique Evolution, Univ. Paris-Sud, AgroParisTech, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
| | | | - David Castellano
- Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
| | | | - Kasper Munch
- Bioinformatics Research Centre, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark
- Corresponding author
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8
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Boeckx C. What made us "hunter-gatherers of words". Front Neurosci 2023; 17:1080861. [PMID: 36845441 PMCID: PMC9947416 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1080861] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/26/2022] [Accepted: 01/19/2023] [Indexed: 02/11/2023] Open
Abstract
This paper makes three interconnected claims: (i) the "human condition" cannot be captured by evolutionary narratives that reduce it to a recent 'cognitive modernity', nor by narratives that eliminates all cognitive differences between us and out closest extinct relatives, (ii) signals from paleogenomics, especially coming from deserts of introgression but also from signatures of positive selection, point to the importance of mutations that impact neurodevelopment, plausibly leading to temperamental differences, which may impact cultural evolutionary trajectories in specific ways, and (iii) these trajectories are expected to affect the language phenotypes, modifying what is being learned and how it is put to use. In particular, I hypothesize that these different trajectories influence the development of symbolic systems, the flexible ways in which symbols combine, and the size and configurations of the communities in which these systems are put to use.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cedric Boeckx
- Section of General Linguistics, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
- Institute of Complex Systems, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
- Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain
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9
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Keeling BA, Quam R, Martínez I, Arsuaga JL, Maroto J. Reassessment of the human mandible from Banyoles (Girona, Spain). J Hum Evol 2023; 174:103291. [PMID: 36493597 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2022.103291] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/09/2021] [Revised: 10/18/2022] [Accepted: 10/21/2022] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
Since the discovery of a human mandible in 1887 near the present-day city of Banyoles, northeastern Spain, researchers have generally emphasized its archaic features, including the lack of chin structures, and suggested affinities with the Neandertals or European Middle Pleistocene (Chibanian) specimens. Uranium-series and electron spin resonance dating suggest the mandible dates to the Late Pleistocene (Tarantian), approximately ca. 45-66 ka. In this study, we reassessed the taxonomic affinities of the Banyoles mandible by comparing it to samples of Middle Pleistocene fossils from Africa and Europe, Neandertals, Early and Upper Paleolithic modern humans, and recent modern humans. We evaluated the frequencies and expressions of morphological features and performed a three-dimensional geometric morphometric analysis on a virtual reconstruction of Banyoles to capture overall mandibular shape. Our results revealed no derived Neandertal morphological features in Banyoles. While a principal component analysis based on Euclidean distances from the first two principal components clearly grouped Banyoles with both fossil and recent Homo sapiens individuals, an analysis of the Procrustes residuals demonstrated that Banyoles did not fit into any of the comparative groups. The lack of Neandertal features in Banyoles is surprising considering its Late Pleistocene age. A consideration of the Middle Pleistocene fossil record in Europe and southwest Asia suggests that Banyoles is unlikely to represent a late-surviving Middle Pleistocene population. The lack of chin structures also complicates an assignment to H. sapiens, although early fossil H. sapiens do show somewhat variable development of the chin structures. Thus, Banyoles represents a non-Neandertal Late Pleistocene European individual and highlights the continuing signal of diversity in the hominin fossil record. The present situation makes Banyoles a prime candidate for ancient DNA or proteomic analyses, which may shed additional light on its taxonomic affinities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Brian A Keeling
- Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University, SUNY, New York, USA.
| | - Rolf Quam
- Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University, SUNY, New York, USA; Centro UCM-ISCIII de Evolución y Comportamiento Humanos, Madrid, Spain; Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA; Cátedra de Otoacústica Evolutiva y Paleoantropología (HM Hospitales-Universidad de Alcalá), Departamento de Ciencias de la Vida, Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain
| | - Ignacio Martínez
- Cátedra de Otoacústica Evolutiva y Paleoantropología (HM Hospitales-Universidad de Alcalá), Departamento de Ciencias de la Vida, Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain; Centro de Investigación Francisco Javier Muñiz, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Calle Paraguay 2155, Primer piso, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, 1121, Argentina
| | - Juan Luis Arsuaga
- Centro UCM-ISCIII de Evolución y Comportamiento Humanos, Madrid, Spain; Departamento de Geodinámica, Estratigrafía y Paleontología, Facultad de Ciencias Geológicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Julià Maroto
- Grup d'Arqueologia i Prehistòria, Universitat de Girona, pl. Ferrater Mora, 1, 17071 Girona, Spain
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10
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Deschamps M, Martín-Lerma I, Linares-Matás G, Zilhão J. Organization of residential space, site function variability, and seasonality of activities among MIS 5 Iberian Neandertals. Sci Rep 2022; 12:20221. [PMID: 36418334 PMCID: PMC9684422 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-24430-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/19/2022] [Accepted: 11/15/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Whether ethnoarcheological models of hunter-gatherer mobility, landscape use, and structuration of the inhabited space are relevant to the archeology of Neandertals and the Middle Paleolithic remains controversial. The thin lenses of hearth-associated stone tools and faunal remains excavated in sub-complex AS5 of Cueva Antón (Murcia, Spain) significantly advance these debates. Dated to 77.8-85.1 ka, these living floors are interstratified in river-accumulated sands and were buried shortly after abandonment by low-energy inundation events, with minimal disturbance and negligible palimpsest formation. Stone tools were made and ergonomically modified to fit tasks; their spatial distributions and use-wear reveal hearth-focused activities and a division of the inhabited space into resting and working areas. Site function varied with season of the year: units III-i/j1 and III-i/j2-3 record winter visits focused on filleting and hide processing, while woodworking predominated in unit III-b/d, which subsumes visits to the site over the course of at least one winter, one spring, and one summer. These snapshots of Neandertal behavior match expectations derived from the ethnographic and Upper Paleolithic records for the lifeways of hunter-gatherers inhabiting temperate regions with a markedly seasonal climate.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marianne Deschamps
- grid.9983.b0000 0001 2181 4263UNIARQ, Centro de Arqueologia da Universidade de Lisboa, Alameda da Universidade, 1600-214 Lisbon, Portugal ,UMR 5608-TRACES, Maison de la recherche, 5 allées Antonio Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cedex 9, France
| | - Ignacio Martín-Lerma
- grid.10586.3a0000 0001 2287 8496Área de Prehistoria, Facultad de Letras, Universidad de Murcia, Calle Santo Cristo, 1, 30001 Murcia, Spain
| | - Gonzalo Linares-Matás
- grid.4991.50000 0004 1936 8948St. Hugh’s College, University of Oxford, St. Margaret’s Road, Oxford, OX2 6LE UK ,grid.5335.00000000121885934Present Address: Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, St Andrew’s Street, Cambridge, CB2 3AP UK
| | - João Zilhão
- grid.9983.b0000 0001 2181 4263UNIARQ, Centro de Arqueologia da Universidade de Lisboa, Alameda da Universidade, 1600-214 Lisbon, Portugal ,grid.425902.80000 0000 9601 989XICREA, Passeig de Lluís Companys, 23, 08010 Barcelona, Spain ,grid.5841.80000 0004 1937 0247Department of History and Archaeology, University of Barcelona, Carrer de Montalegre, 6-8, 08001 Barcelona, Spain
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11
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Bergman J, Schierup MH. Evolutionary dynamics of pseudoautosomal region 1 in humans and great apes. Genome Biol 2022; 23:215. [PMID: 36253794 PMCID: PMC9575207 DOI: 10.1186/s13059-022-02784-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/30/2021] [Accepted: 09/30/2022] [Indexed: 12/03/2022] Open
Abstract
Background The pseudoautosomal region 1 (PAR1) is a 2.7 Mb telomeric region of human sex chromosomes. PAR1 has a crucial role in ensuring proper segregation of sex chromosomes during male meiosis, exposing it to extreme recombination and mutation processes. We investigate PAR1 evolution using population genomic datasets of extant humans, eight populations of great apes, and two archaic human genome sequences. Results We find that PAR1 is fast evolving and closer to evolutionary nucleotide equilibrium than autosomal telomeres. We detect a difference between substitution patterns and extant diversity in PAR1, mainly driven by the conflict between strong mutation and recombination-associated fixation bias at CpG sites. We detect excess C-to-G mutations in PAR1 of all great apes, specific to the mutagenic effect of male recombination. Despite recent evidence for Y chromosome introgression from humans into Neanderthals, we find that the Neanderthal PAR1 retained similarity to the Denisovan sequence. We find differences between substitution spectra of these archaics suggesting rapid evolution of PAR1 in recent hominin history. Frequency analysis of alleles segregating in females and males provided no evidence for recent sexual antagonism in this region. We study repeat content and double-strand break hotspot regions in PAR1 and find that they may play roles in ensuring the obligate X-Y recombination event during male meiosis. Conclusions Our study provides an unprecedented quantification of population genetic forces governing PAR1 biology across extant and extinct hominids. PAR1 evolutionary dynamics are predominantly governed by recombination processes with a strong impact on mutation patterns across all species. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13059-022-02784-x.
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Affiliation(s)
- Juraj Bergman
- Bioinformatics Research Centre, Aarhus University, DK-8000, Aarhus C, Denmark.
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12
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Skov L, Peyrégne S, Popli D, Iasi LNM, Devièse T, Slon V, Zavala EI, Hajdinjak M, Sümer AP, Grote S, Bossoms Mesa A, López Herráez D, Nickel B, Nagel S, Richter J, Essel E, Gansauge M, Schmidt A, Korlević P, Comeskey D, Derevianko AP, Kharevich A, Markin SV, Talamo S, Douka K, Krajcarz MT, Roberts RG, Higham T, Viola B, Krivoshapkin AI, Kolobova KA, Kelso J, Meyer M, Pääbo S, Peter BM. Genetic insights into the social organization of Neanderthals. Nature 2022; 610:519-525. [PMID: 36261548 PMCID: PMC9581778 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05283-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/21/2022] [Accepted: 08/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
Genomic analyses of Neanderthals have previously provided insights into their population history and relationship to modern humans1-8, but the social organization of Neanderthal communities remains poorly understood. Here we present genetic data for 13 Neanderthals from two Middle Palaeolithic sites in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia: 11 from Chagyrskaya Cave9,10 and 2 from Okladnikov Cave11-making this one of the largest genetic studies of a Neanderthal population to date. We used hybridization capture to obtain genome-wide nuclear data, as well as mitochondrial and Y-chromosome sequences. Some Chagyrskaya individuals were closely related, including a father-daughter pair and a pair of second-degree relatives, indicating that at least some of the individuals lived at the same time. Up to one-third of these individuals' genomes had long segments of homozygosity, suggesting that the Chagyrskaya Neanderthals were part of a small community. In addition, the Y-chromosome diversity is an order of magnitude lower than the mitochondrial diversity, a pattern that we found is best explained by female migration between communities. Thus, the genetic data presented here provide a detailed documentation of the social organization of an isolated Neanderthal community at the easternmost extent of their known range.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laurits Skov
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
| | - Stéphane Peyrégne
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Divyaratan Popli
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Leonardo N M Iasi
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Thibaut Devièse
- European Centre for Research and Education in Environmental Geosciences (CEREGE), Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, IRD, INRAE, Collège de France, Aix-en-Provence, France
| | - Viviane Slon
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
- Department of Anatomy and Anthropology Sackler, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
- The Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
- Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Elena I Zavala
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Mateja Hajdinjak
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
- The Francis Crick Institute, London, UK
| | - Arev P Sümer
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Steffi Grote
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Alba Bossoms Mesa
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - David López Herráez
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Birgit Nickel
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Sarah Nagel
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Julia Richter
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Elena Essel
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Marie Gansauge
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Anna Schmidt
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Petra Korlević
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
- Wellcome Sanger Institute, Hinxton, UK
| | - Daniel Comeskey
- Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Anatoly P Derevianko
- Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia
| | - Aliona Kharevich
- Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia
| | - Sergey V Markin
- Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia
| | - Sahra Talamo
- Department of Chemistry G. Ciamician, Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Katerina Douka
- Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
- Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences Forschungsverbund, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Maciej T Krajcarz
- Institute of Geological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
| | - Richard G Roberts
- Centre for Archaeological Science, School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia
- Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia
| | - Thomas Higham
- Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences Forschungsverbund, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Bence Viola
- Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | - Andrey I Krivoshapkin
- Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia
| | - Kseniya A Kolobova
- Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia
| | - Janet Kelso
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Matthias Meyer
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Svante Pääbo
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Benjamin M Peter
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
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13
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Reilly PF, Tjahjadi A, Miller SL, Akey JM, Tucci S. The contribution of Neanderthal introgression to modern human traits. Curr Biol 2022; 32:R970-R983. [PMID: 36167050 PMCID: PMC9741939 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.08.027] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
Abstract
Neanderthals, our closest extinct relatives, lived in western Eurasia from 400,000 years ago until they went extinct around 40,000 years ago. DNA retrieved from ancient specimens revealed that Neanderthals mated with modern human contemporaries. As a consequence, introgressed Neanderthal DNA survives scattered across the human genome such that 1-4% of the genome of present-day people outside Africa are inherited from Neanderthal ancestors. Patterns of Neanderthal introgressed genomic sequences suggest that Neanderthal alleles had distinct fates in the modern human genetic background. Some Neanderthal alleles facilitated human adaptation to new environments such as novel climate conditions, UV exposure levels and pathogens, while others had deleterious consequences. Here, we review the body of work on Neanderthal introgression over the past decade. We describe how evolutionary forces shaped the genomic landscape of Neanderthal introgression and highlight the impact of introgressed alleles on human biology and phenotypic variation.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Audrey Tjahjadi
- Department of Anthropology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
| | | | - Joshua M Akey
- Lewis Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
| | - Serena Tucci
- Department of Anthropology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
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14
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Font-Porterias N, García-Fernández C, Aizpurua-Iraola J, Comas D, Torrents D, de Cid R, Calafell F. Sequence diversity of the uniparentally transmitted portions of the genome in the resident population of Catalonia. Forensic Sci Int Genet 2022; 61:102783. [DOI: 10.1016/j.fsigen.2022.102783] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/10/2022] [Revised: 09/23/2022] [Accepted: 09/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
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15
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Andreeva TV, Manakhov AD, Gusev FE, Patrikeev AD, Golovanova LV, Doronichev VB, Shirobokov IG, Rogaev EI. Genomic analysis of a novel Neanderthal from Mezmaiskaya Cave provides insights into the genetic relationships of Middle Palaeolithic populations. Sci Rep 2022; 12:13016. [PMID: 35906446 PMCID: PMC9338269 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-16164-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/03/2022] [Accepted: 07/05/2022] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
The Mezmaiskaya cave is located on the North Caucasus near the border that divides Europe and Asia. Previously, fossil remains for two Neanderthals were reported from Mezmaiskaya Cave. A tooth from the third archaic hominin specimen (Mezmaiskaya 3) was retrieved from layer 3 in Mezmaiskaya Cave. We performed genome sequencing of Mezmaiskaya 3. Analysis of partial nuclear genome sequence revealed that it belongs to a Homo sapiens neanderthalensis female. Based on a high-coverage mitochondrial genome sequence, we demonstrated that the relationships of Mezmaiskaya 3 to Mezmaiskaya 1 and Stajnia S5000 individuals were closer than those to other Neanderthals. Our data demonstrate the close genetic connections between the early Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthals that were replaced by genetically distant later group in the same geographic areas. Based on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data, we suggest that Mezmaiskaya 3 was the latest Neanderthal individual from the early Neanderthal’s branches. We proposed a hierarchical nomenclature for the mtDNA haplogroups of Neanderthals. In addition, we retrieved ancestral mtDNA mutations in presumably functional sites fixed in the Neanderthal clades, and also provided the first data showing mtDNA heteroplasmy in Neanderthal specimen.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tatiana V Andreeva
- Center for Genetics and Life Science, Sirius University of Science and Technology, Sochi, Russia, 354340. .,Laboratory of Evolutionary Genomics, Department of Genomics and Human Genetics, Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, 119333. .,Faculty of Biology, Centre for Genetics and Genetic Technologies, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia, 119192.
| | - Andrey D Manakhov
- Center for Genetics and Life Science, Sirius University of Science and Technology, Sochi, Russia, 354340.,Laboratory of Evolutionary Genomics, Department of Genomics and Human Genetics, Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, 119333.,Faculty of Biology, Centre for Genetics and Genetic Technologies, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia, 119192
| | - Fedor E Gusev
- Center for Genetics and Life Science, Sirius University of Science and Technology, Sochi, Russia, 354340.,Laboratory of Evolutionary Genomics, Department of Genomics and Human Genetics, Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, 119333.,Faculty of Biology, Centre for Genetics and Genetic Technologies, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia, 119192
| | - Anton D Patrikeev
- Laboratory of Evolutionary Genomics, Department of Genomics and Human Genetics, Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, 119333
| | | | | | - Ivan G Shirobokov
- Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia, 199034
| | - Evgeny I Rogaev
- Center for Genetics and Life Science, Sirius University of Science and Technology, Sochi, Russia, 354340. .,Laboratory of Evolutionary Genomics, Department of Genomics and Human Genetics, Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, 119333. .,Faculty of Biology, Centre for Genetics and Genetic Technologies, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia, 119192. .,Department of Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, 01604, USA.
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16
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Peyrégne S, Kelso J, Peter BM, Pääbo S. The evolutionary history of human spindle genes includes back-and-forth gene flow with Neandertals. eLife 2022; 11:75464. [PMID: 35816093 PMCID: PMC9273211 DOI: 10.7554/elife.75464] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/10/2021] [Accepted: 06/14/2022] [Indexed: 12/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Proteins associated with the spindle apparatus, a cytoskeletal structure that ensures the proper segregation of chromosomes during cell division, experienced an unusual number of amino acid substitutions in modern humans after the split from the ancestors of Neandertals and Denisovans. Here, we analyze the history of these substitutions and show that some of the genes in which they occur may have been targets of positive selection. We also find that the two changes in the kinetochore scaffold 1 (KNL1) protein, previously believed to be specific to modern humans, were present in some Neandertals. We show that the KNL1 gene of these Neandertals shared a common ancestor with present-day Africans about 200,000 years ago due to gene flow from the ancestors (or relatives) of modern humans into Neandertals. Subsequently, some non-Africans inherited this modern human-like gene variant from Neandertals, but none inherited the ancestral gene variants. These results add to the growing evidence of early contacts between modern humans and archaic groups in Eurasia and illustrate the intricate relationships among these groups.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stéphane Peyrégne
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Janet Kelso
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Benjamin M Peter
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Svante Pääbo
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
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17
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Maier PA, Runfeldt G, Estes RJ, Vilar MG. African mitochondrial haplogroup L7: a 100,000-year-old maternal human lineage discovered through reassessment and new sequencing. Sci Rep 2022; 12:10747. [PMID: 35750688 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-13856-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/05/2021] [Accepted: 05/30/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Archaeological and genomic evidence suggest that modern Homo sapiens have roamed the planet for some 300–500 thousand years. In contrast, global human mitochondrial (mtDNA) diversity coalesces to one African female ancestor (“Mitochondrial Eve”) some 145 thousand years ago, owing to the ¼ gene pool size of our matrilineally inherited haploid genome. Therefore, most of human prehistory was spent in Africa where early ancestors of Southern African Khoisan and Central African rainforest hunter-gatherers (RFHGs) segregated into smaller groups. Their subdivisions followed climatic oscillations, new modes of subsistence, local adaptations, and cultural-linguistic differences, all prior to their exodus out of Africa. Seven African mtDNA haplogroups (L0–L6) traditionally captured this ancient structure—these L haplogroups have formed the backbone of the mtDNA tree for nearly two decades. Here we describe L7, an eighth haplogroup that we estimate to be ~ 100 thousand years old and which has been previously misclassified in the literature. In addition, L7 has a phylogenetic sublineage L7a*, the oldest singleton branch in the human mtDNA tree (~ 80 thousand years). We found that L7 and its sister group L5 are both low-frequency relics centered around East Africa, but in different populations (L7: Sandawe; L5: Mbuti). Although three small subclades of African foragers hint at the population origins of L5'7, the majority of subclades are divided into Afro-Asiatic and eastern Bantu groups, indicative of more recent admixture. A regular re-estimation of the entire mtDNA haplotype tree is needed to ensure correct cladistic placement of new samples in the future.
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18
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Andirkó A, Moriano J, Vitriolo A, Kuhlwilm M, Testa G, Boeckx C. Temporal mapping of derived high-frequency gene variants supports the mosaic nature of the evolution of Homo sapiens. Sci Rep 2022; 12:9937. [PMID: 35705575 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-13589-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/12/2022] [Accepted: 05/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Large-scale estimations of the time of emergence of variants are essential to examine hypotheses concerning human evolution with precision. Using an open repository of genetic variant age estimations, we offer here a temporal evaluation of various evolutionarily relevant datasets, such as Homo sapiens-specific variants, high-frequency variants found in genetic windows under positive selection, introgressed variants from extinct human species, as well as putative regulatory variants specific to various brain regions. We find a recurrent bimodal distribution of high-frequency variants, but also evidence for specific enrichments of gene categories in distinct time windows, pointing to different periods of phenotypic changes, resulting in a mosaic. With a temporal classification of genetic mutations in hand, we then applied a machine learning tool to predict what genes have changed more in certain time windows, and which tissues these genes may have impacted more. Overall, we provide a fine-grained temporal mapping of derived variants in Homo sapiens that helps to illuminate the intricate evolutionary history of our species.
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19
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Brand CM, Colbran LL, Capra JA. Predicting Archaic Hominin Phenotypes from Genomic Data. Annu Rev Genomics Hum Genet 2022; 23:591-612. [PMID: 35440148 DOI: 10.1146/annurev-genom-111521-121903] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
Ancient DNA provides a powerful window into the biology of extant and extinct species, including humans' closest relatives: Denisovans and Neanderthals. Here, we review what is known about archaic hominin phenotypes from genomic data and how those inferences have been made. We contend that understanding the influence of variants on lower-level molecular phenotypes-such as gene expression and protein function-is a promising approach to using ancient DNA to learn about archaic hominin traits. Molecular phenotypes have simpler genetic architectures than organism-level complex phenotypes, and this approach enables moving beyond association studies by proposing hypotheses about the effects of archaic variants that are testable in model systems. The major challenge to understanding archaic hominin phenotypes is broadening our ability to accurately map genotypes to phenotypes, but ongoing advances ensure that there will be much more to learn about archaic hominin phenotypes from their genomes. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, Volume 23 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
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Affiliation(s)
- Colin M Brand
- Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA; , .,Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA
| | - Laura L Colbran
- Department of Genetics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - John A Capra
- Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA; , .,Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA
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20
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Pop CM, Wilson L, Browne CL. Evaluating landscape knowledge and lithic resource selection at the French Middle Paleolithic site of the Bau de l'Aubesier. J Hum Evol 2022; 166:103152. [PMID: 35338861 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2022.103152] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/16/2021] [Revised: 01/05/2022] [Accepted: 01/09/2022] [Indexed: 01/29/2023]
Abstract
We report on the application of a novel approach to exploring the degree of landscape knowledge, wayfinding abilities, and the nature of decision-making processes reflected in the utilization of stone resources in the French Middle Paleolithic. Specifically, we use data from the site of the Bau de l'Aubesier to explore the reasons why a majority of the 350 raw material sources cataloged in the surrounding region appear not to have been utilized, including several located near the site and yielding high-quality lithic materials. To this end, we focus on the spatial relationships between sources as an explanatory variable, operationalized in terms of minimum travel times. Using geographic information system software and a generalized linear model of resource selection derived from the Bau assemblages, we compute source utilization probabilities from the perspective of hominins located off-site. We do so under three optimization scenarios, factoring in the intrinsic characteristics (e.g., quality) and time required to reach each source on the way to the Bau. More generally, we find that in slightly more than 50% of cases, seemingly viable sources may have been ignored simply because the minimum cost path leading back to the Bau passes through or requires only minimal deviations to reach, higher quality options. More generally, we found that throughout the entire region, a cost/benefit analysis of competing sources favors those from source areas known to have been utilized. Virtually all the available information on lithic procurement at the Bau is consistent with a model of landscape utilization premised on detailed knowledge of a very large area, an ability to accurately estimate travel times between locations, and a pragmatic strategy of stone resource exploitation based on minimizing costs (travel and search times) and maximizing utility.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cornel Marian Pop
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany; Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Columbia College, 438 Terminal Avenue, Vancouver, B.C., V6A 0C1, Canada.
| | - Lucy Wilson
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of New Brunswick, 100 Tucker Park Road, Saint John, N.B., E2L 4L5, Canada
| | - Constance L Browne
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of New Brunswick, 100 Tucker Park Road, Saint John, N.B., E2L 4L5, Canada
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21
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Kuklina M, Dirin D, Filippova V, Savvinova A, Trufanov A, Krasnoshtanova N, Bogdanov V, Kobylkin D, Fedorova A, Itegelova A, Batotsyrenov E. Transport Accessibility and Tourism Development Prospects of Indigenous Communities of Siberia. Sustainability 2022; 14:1750. [DOI: 10.3390/su14031750] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/01/2023]
Abstract
This paper aims to identify details of interaction and mutual influence of tourism and transport infrastructure development using a combination of sociological and statistical methods. For the analysis, five key sites were selected in several parts of Siberia, differing in natural, socio-economic, and ethnocultural quality, but possessing the presence of compact indigenous communities that reproduce traditional forms of both cultural life and economic activity. While each community has its own unique culture and resources for development, several similar characteristics were revealed. It has been revealed that tourists themselves and workers of the tourism sector, including local residents, are unequivocal supporters of transportation system development. A significant part of the population, recognizing the need and advantages of having a well-functioning transport infrastructure, expresses a negative attitude towards easy accessibility of the territory for outsiders who violate the rules and regime for usage of natural resources and augment economic and cultural competition for the local population. Understanding key processes of interrelations, both explicit and hidden, concomitant to socioeconomic development of remote indigenous communities, with the simultaneous development of tourism and transport, allows the authors to propose a model outline of attitudes of local communities towards tourist and transport perspectives in the territory of their residence.
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22
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Ramos L, Antunes A. Decoding sex: Elucidating sex determination and how high-quality genome assemblies are untangling the evolutionary dynamics of sex chromosomes. Genomics 2022; 114:110277. [PMID: 35104609 DOI: 10.1016/j.ygeno.2022.110277] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/07/2021] [Revised: 12/22/2021] [Accepted: 01/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Sexual reproduction is a diverse and widespread process. In gonochoristic species, the differentiation of sexes occurs through diverse mechanisms, influenced by environmental and genetic factors. In most vertebrates, a master-switch gene is responsible for triggering a sex determination network. However, only a few genes have acquired master-switch functions, and this process is associated with the evolution of sex-chromosomes, which have a significant influence in evolution. Additionally, their highly repetitive regions impose challenges for high-quality sequencing, even using high-throughput, state-of-the-art techniques. Here, we review the mechanisms involved in sex determination and their role in the evolution of species, particularly vertebrates, focusing on sex chromosomes and the challenges involved in sequencing these genomic elements. We also address the improvements provided by the growth of sequencing projects, by generating a massive number of near-gapless, telomere-to-telomere, chromosome-level, phased assemblies, increasing the number and quality of sex-chromosome sequences available for further studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Luana Ramos
- CIIMAR/CIMAR, Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research, University of Porto, Terminal de Cruzeiros do Porto de Leixões, Av. General Norton de Matos, s/n, 4450-208 Porto, Portugal; Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal
| | - Agostinho Antunes
- CIIMAR/CIMAR, Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research, University of Porto, Terminal de Cruzeiros do Porto de Leixões, Av. General Norton de Matos, s/n, 4450-208 Porto, Portugal; Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal.
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23
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Brines J, Billeaud C. Breast-Feeding from an Evolutionary Perspective. Healthcare (Basel) 2021; 9:healthcare9111458. [PMID: 34828507 PMCID: PMC8623900 DOI: 10.3390/healthcare9111458] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/15/2021] [Revised: 10/17/2021] [Accepted: 10/22/2021] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Lactation is the most critical period of mammal feeding given the compulsory dependence on milk of the offspring during a more or less extensive period following birth. This has also been the case for the human species until relatively recent times when heterologous milk processing has allowed the alternative of artificial lactation. The advantages and disadvantages of natural and artificial lactation (formula) have been widely discussed from the biological, psychological and cultural perspectives, without reaching a general agreement among the breastfeeding women themselves or among the health professionals concerned. On the subject of breastfeeding, the information available is enormous but as in other instances, the excess of it has often made it difficult to acquire objective knowledge on the matter that has hindered decision-making in specific circumstances. This situation is understandable given the diversity and the innumerable contingencies that the mother and health professionals must face in their natural and social (cultural) environments. To reduce these difficulties and taking into consideration the biological and cultural aspects involved in infant feeding, this article analyzes some aspects of the subject from the point of view of biological evolution as the mother-child dyad, mother-infant conflicts, in particular the conflict of weaning, late-onset primary lactase deficiency and the prevention from childhood of adult diseases. All of which allows to offer a testimony of gratitude and respect to women who have assumed the responsibility of breastfeeding their infants because without them the human species would not have existed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Juan Brines
- Department of Pediatrics, University of Valencia, 46010 Valencia, Spain;
| | - Claude Billeaud
- Neonatology & Nutrition, CIC Pédiatrique 1401, INSERM, Hopital des Enfants, CHU Pellegrin Place Amelie Raba Leon, 33076 Bordeaux, France
- Correspondence:
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Roksandic M, Radović P, Wu XJ, Bae CJ. Resolving the "muddle in the middle": The case for Homo bodoensis sp. nov. Evol Anthropol 2021; 31:20-29. [PMID: 34710249 PMCID: PMC9297855 DOI: 10.1002/evan.21929] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/24/2021] [Revised: 09/15/2021] [Accepted: 10/08/2021] [Indexed: 01/01/2023]
Abstract
Recent developments in the field of palaeoanthropology necessitate the suppression of two hominin taxa and the introduction of a new species of hominins to help resolve the current nebulous state of Middle Pleistocene (Chibanian) hominin taxonomy. In particular, the poorly defined and variably understood hominin taxa Homo heidelbergensis (both sensu stricto and sensu lato) and Homo rhodesiensis need to be abandoned as they fail to reflect the full range of hominin variability in the Middle Pleistocene. Instead, we propose: (1) introduction of a new taxon, Homo bodoensis sp. nov., as an early Middle Pleistocene ancestor of the Homo sapiens lineage, with a pan-African distribution that extends into the eastern Mediterranean (Southeast Europe and the Levant); (2) that many of the fossils from Western Europe (e.g. Sima de los Huesos) currently assigned to H. heidelbergensis s.s. be reassigned to Homo neanderthalensis to reflect the early appearance of Neanderthal derived traits in the Middle Pleistocene in the region; and (3) that the Middle Pleistocene Asian fossils, particularly from China, likely represent a different lineage altogether.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mirjana Roksandic
- Department of Anthropology, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.,DFG, Words Bones Genes Tools, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
| | - Predrag Radović
- Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.,National Museum Kraljevo, Kraljevo, Serbia
| | - Xiu-Jie Wu
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origin of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Christopher J Bae
- Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
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25
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Abstract
[Figure: see text].
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Affiliation(s)
- Yichen Liu
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100044, China
| | - Xiaowei Mao
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100044, China
| | - Johannes Krause
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
| | - Qiaomei Fu
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100044, China.,University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
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Árnason Ú. The unidirectional phylogeny of Homo sapiens anchors the origin of modern humans in Eurasia. Hereditas 2021; 158:36. [PMID: 34521476 DOI: 10.1186/s41065-021-00197-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/10/2021] [Accepted: 08/10/2021] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND The Out of Africa hypothesis, OOAH, was challenged recently in an extended mtDNA analysis, PPA (Progressive Phylogenetic Analysis), that identified the African human populations as paraphyletic, a finding that contradicted the common OOAH understanding that Hss had originated in Africa and invaded Eurasia from there. The results were consistent with the molecular Out of Eurasia hypothesis, OOEH, and Eurasian palaeontology, a subject that has been largely disregarded in the discussion of OOAH. RESULTS In the present study the mtDNA tree, a phylogeny based on maternal inheritance, was compared to the nuclear DNA tree of the paternally transmitted Y-chromosome haplotypes, Y-DNAs. The comparison showed full phylogenetic coherence between these two separate sets of data. The results were consistent with potentially four translocations of modern humans from Eurasia into Africa, the earliest taking place ≈ 250,000 years before present, YBP. The results were in accordance with the postulates behind OOEH at the same time as they lent no support to the OOAH. CONCLUSIONS The conformity between the mtDNA and Y-DNA phylogenies of Hss is consistent with the understanding that Eurasia was the donor and not the receiver in human evolution. The evolutionary problems related to OOAH became similarly exposed by the mtDNA introgression that took place from Hss into Neanderthals ≈ 500,000 YBP, a circumstance that demonstrated the early coexistence of the two lineages in Eurasia.
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Ni X, Ji Q, Wu W, Shao Q, Ji Y, Zhang C, Liang L, Ge J, Guo Z, Li J, Li Q, Grün R, Stringer C. Massive cranium from Harbin in northeastern China establishes a new Middle Pleistocene human lineage. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2021; 2:100130. [PMID: 34557770 DOI: 10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100130] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/10/2021] [Accepted: 06/04/2021] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
It has recently become clear that several human lineages coexisted with Homo sapiens during the late Middle and Late Pleistocene. Here, we report an archaic human fossil that throws new light on debates concerning the diversification of the Homo genus and the origin of H. sapiens. The fossil was recovered in Harbin city in northeastern China, with a minimum uranium-series age of 146 ka. This cranium is one of the best preserved Middle Pleistocene human fossils. Its massive size, with a large cranial capacity (∼1,420 mL) falling in the range of modern humans, is combined with a mosaic of primitive and derived characters. It differs from all the other named Homo species by presenting a combination of features, such as long and low cranial vault, a wide and low face, large and almost square orbits, gently curved but massively developed supraorbital torus, flat and low cheekbones with a shallow canine fossa, and a shallow palate with thick alveolar bone supporting very large molars. The excellent preservation of the Harbin cranium advances our understanding of several less-complete late Middle Pleistocene fossils from China, which have been interpreted as local evolutionary intermediates between the earlier species Homo erectus and later H. sapiens. Phylogenetic analyses based on parsimony criteria and Bayesian tip-dating suggest that the Harbin cranium and some other Middle Pleistocene human fossils from China, such as those from Dali and Xiahe, form a third East Asian lineage, which is a part of the sister group of the H. sapiens lineage. Our analyses of such morphologically distinctive archaic human lineages from Asia, Europe, and Africa suggest that the diversification of the Homo genus may have had a much deeper timescale than previously presumed. Sympatric isolation of small populations combined with stochastic long-distance dispersals is the best fitting biogeographical model for interpreting the evolution of the Homo genus. More than 100,000 years ago, several human species coexisted in Asia, Europe, and Africa A completely preserved fossil human cranium discovered in the Harbin area provides critical evidence for understanding the evolution of humans and the origin of our species The Harbin cranium has a large cranial capacity (∼1,420 mL) falling in the range of modern humans, but is combined with a mosaic of primitive and derived characters Our comprehensive phylogenetic analyses suggest that the Harbin cranium represents a new sister lineage for Homo sapiens A multi-directional “shuttle dispersal model” is more likely to explain the complex phylogenetic connections among African and Eurasian Homo species/populations
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Miao B, Liu Y, Gu W, Wei Q, Wu Q, Wang W, Zhang M, Ding M, Wang T, Liu J, Liu F, Cao P, Dai Q, Yang R, Feng X, Ping W, Hou W, Yuan H, Fu Q. Maternal genetic structure of a neolithic population of the Yangshao culture. J Genet Genomics 2021; 48:746-750. [PMID: 34215540 DOI: 10.1016/j.jgg.2021.04.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/12/2021] [Revised: 03/30/2021] [Accepted: 04/11/2021] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Bo Miao
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China; College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi'an 710069, China
| | - Yichen Liu
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China
| | - Wanfa Gu
- Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in Zhengzhou City, Zhengzhou 450052, China
| | - Qingli Wei
- Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in Zhengzhou City, Zhengzhou 450052, China
| | - Qian Wu
- Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in Zhengzhou City, Zhengzhou 450052, China
| | - Wenjun Wang
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China; College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi'an 710069, China
| | - Ming Zhang
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China
| | - Manyu Ding
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences 100049, China
| | - Tianyi Wang
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China; College of Cultural Heritage, Northwest University, Xi'an 710069, China
| | - Juncen Liu
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences 100049, China
| | - Feng Liu
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China
| | - Peng Cao
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China
| | - Qingyan Dai
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China
| | - Ruowei Yang
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China
| | - Xiaotian Feng
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China
| | - Wanjing Ping
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China
| | - Weihong Hou
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China
| | - Haibing Yuan
- School of Archaeology and Museology & National Demonstration Center for Experimental Archaeology Education, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, China.
| | - Qiaomei Fu
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences 100049, China.
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29
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Ma P, Yang X, Yan S, Li C, Gao S, Han B, Hou K, Robbeets M, Wei LH, Cui Y. Ancient Y-DNA with reconstructed phylogeny provide insights into the demographic history of paternal haplogroup N1a2-F1360. J Genet Genomics 2021; 48:1130-1133. [PMID: 34425243 DOI: 10.1016/j.jgg.2021.07.018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/18/2021] [Revised: 07/26/2021] [Accepted: 07/27/2021] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Pengcheng Ma
- School of Life Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
| | - Xuan Yang
- School of Life Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
| | - Shi Yan
- School of Ethnology and Sociology, Minzu University of China, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Chunxiang Li
- School of Life Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
| | - Shizhu Gao
- College of Pharmacia Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun 130021, China
| | - Binghua Han
- Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, Taiyuan 030001, China
| | - Kan Hou
- School of History and Culture, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China
| | - Martine Robbeets
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena 07745, Germany
| | - Lan-Hai Wei
- Department of Anthropology and Ethnology, Institute of Anthropology, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China; B&R International Joint Laboratory for Eurasian Anthropology, Fudan University, Shanghai 200438, China.
| | - Yinqiu Cui
- School of Life Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China; Research Center for Chinese Frontier Archaeology of Jilin University, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China.
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Rohrlach AB, Papac L, Childebayeva A, Rivollat M, Villalba-Mouco V, Neumann GU, Penske S, Skourtanioti E, van de Loosdrecht M, Akar M, Boyadzhiev K, Boyadzhiev Y, Deguilloux MF, Dobeš M, Erdal YS, Ernée M, Frangipane M, Furmanek M, Friederich S, Ghesquière E, Hałuszko A, Hansen S, Küßner M, Mannino M, Özbal R, Reinhold S, Rottier S, Salazar-García DC, Diaz JS, Stockhammer PW, de Togores Muñoz CR, Yener KA, Posth C, Krause J, Herbig A, Haak W. Using Y-chromosome capture enrichment to resolve haplogroup H2 shows new evidence for a two-path Neolithic expansion to Western Europe. Sci Rep 2021; 11:15005. [PMID: 34294811 PMCID: PMC8298398 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-94491-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/26/2021] [Accepted: 07/09/2021] [Indexed: 01/08/2023] Open
Abstract
Uniparentally-inherited markers on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the non-recombining regions of the Y chromosome (NRY), have been used for the past 30 years to investigate the history of humans from a maternal and paternal perspective. Researchers have preferred mtDNA due to its abundance in the cells, and comparatively high substitution rate. Conversely, the NRY is less susceptible to back mutations and saturation, and is potentially more informative than mtDNA owing to its longer sequence length. However, due to comparatively poor NRY coverage via shotgun sequencing, and the relatively low and biased representation of Y-chromosome variants on capture assays such as the 1240 k, ancient DNA studies often fail to utilize the unique perspective that the NRY can yield. Here we introduce a new DNA enrichment assay, coined YMCA (Y-mappable capture assay), that targets the "mappable" regions of the NRY. We show that compared to low-coverage shotgun sequencing and 1240 k capture, YMCA significantly improves the mean coverage and number of sites covered on the NRY, increasing the number of Y-haplogroup informative SNPs, and allowing for the identification of previously undiscovered variants. To illustrate the power of YMCA, we show that the analysis of ancient Y-chromosome lineages can help to resolve Y-chromosomal haplogroups. As a case study, we focus on H2, a haplogroup associated with a critical event in European human history: the Neolithic transition. By disentangling the evolutionary history of this haplogroup, we further elucidate the two separate paths by which early farmers expanded from Anatolia and the Near East to western Europe.
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Affiliation(s)
- Adam B Rohrlach
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745, Jena, Germany. .,ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers, School of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, 5005, Australia.
| | - Luka Papac
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745, Jena, Germany
| | - Ainash Childebayeva
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745, Jena, Germany
| | - Maïté Rivollat
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745, Jena, Germany.,Université de Bordeaux, CNRS, PACEA-UMR 5199, 33615, Pessac, France
| | - Vanessa Villalba-Mouco
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745, Jena, Germany.,Institute of Evolutionary Biology, CSIC-Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Gunnar U Neumann
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745, Jena, Germany
| | - Sandra Penske
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745, Jena, Germany
| | - Eirini Skourtanioti
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745, Jena, Germany
| | - Marieke van de Loosdrecht
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745, Jena, Germany
| | - Murat Akar
- Department of Archaeology, Mustafa Kemal University, 31060, Alahan-Antakya, Hatay, Turkey
| | - Kamen Boyadzhiev
- National Institute of Archaeology with Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1000, Sofia, Bulgaria
| | - Yavor Boyadzhiev
- National Institute of Archaeology with Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1000, Sofia, Bulgaria
| | | | - Miroslav Dobeš
- Department of Prehistory, Institute of Archaeology CAS, Prague, Czech Republic
| | - Yilmaz S Erdal
- Department of Anthropology, Hacettepe University, 06800, Ankara, Turkey
| | - Michal Ernée
- Department of Prehistory, Institute of Archaeology CAS, Prague, Czech Republic
| | | | | | - Susanne Friederich
- State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt and State Museum of Prehistory, Halle, Germany
| | - Emmanuel Ghesquière
- Inrap Grand Ouest, Bourguébus, France.,Université de Rennes 1, CNRS, CReAAH-UMR, 6566, Rennes, France
| | - Agata Hałuszko
- Institute of Archaeology, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland.,Archeolodzy.org Foundation, Wrocław, Poland
| | - Svend Hansen
- Eurasia Department, German Archaeological Institute, Berlin, Germany
| | - Mario Küßner
- Thuringian State Office for Heritage Management and Archeology, Weimar, Germany
| | - Marcello Mannino
- Department of Archaeology, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, 8270, Højbjerg, Denmark
| | - Rana Özbal
- Department of Archaeology and History of Art, Koç University, 34450, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Sabine Reinhold
- Eurasia Department, German Archaeological Institute, Berlin, Germany
| | - Stéphane Rottier
- Université de Bordeaux, CNRS, PACEA-UMR 5199, 33615, Pessac, France
| | - Domingo Carlos Salazar-García
- Grupo de Investigación en Prehistoria IT-1223-19 (UPV-EHU)/IKERBASQUE-Basque Foundation for Science, Vitoria, Spain.,Departament de Prehistòria, Arqueologia i Història Antiga, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain.,Department of Geological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
| | | | - Philipp W Stockhammer
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745, Jena, Germany.,Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, 80799, Munich, Germany
| | | | - K Aslihan Yener
- Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW), New York University, New York, NY, 10028, USA
| | - Cosimo Posth
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745, Jena, Germany.,Archaeo- and Palaeogenetics Group, Institute for Archaeological Sciences Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, 72070, Tübingen, Germany
| | - Johannes Krause
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745, Jena, Germany
| | - Alexander Herbig
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745, Jena, Germany
| | - Wolfgang Haak
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745, Jena, Germany. .,School of Biological Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, 5005, Australia.
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31
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Ahlquist KD, Bañuelos MM, Funk A, Lai J, Rong S, Villanea FA, Witt KE. Our Tangled Family Tree: New Genomic Methods Offer Insight into the Legacy of Archaic Admixture. Genome Biol Evol 2021; 13:evab115. [PMID: 34028527 PMCID: PMC8480178 DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evab115] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/02/2021] [Revised: 05/07/2021] [Accepted: 05/22/2021] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
The archaic ancestry present in the human genome has captured the imagination of both scientists and the wider public in recent years. This excitement is the result of new studies pushing the envelope of what we can learn from the archaic genetic information that has survived for over 50,000 years in the human genome. Here, we review the most recent ten years of literature on the topic of archaic introgression, including the current state of knowledge on Neanderthal and Denisovan introgression, as well as introgression from other as-yet unidentified archaic populations. We focus this review on four topics: 1) a reimagining of human demographic history, including evidence for multiple admixture events between modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other archaic populations; 2) state-of-the-art methods for detecting archaic ancestry in population-level genomic data; 3) how these novel methods can detect archaic introgression in modern African populations; and 4) the functional consequences of archaic gene variants, including how those variants were co-opted into novel function in modern human populations. The goal of this review is to provide a simple-to-access reference for the relevant methods and novel data, which has changed our understanding of the relationship between our species and its siblings. This body of literature reveals the large degree to which the genetic legacy of these extinct hominins has been integrated into the human populations of today.
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Affiliation(s)
- K D Ahlquist
- Center for Computational Molecular Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
- Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
| | - Mayra M Bañuelos
- Center for Computational Molecular Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
- Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
| | - Alyssa Funk
- Center for Computational Molecular Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
- Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
| | - Jiaying Lai
- Center for Computational Molecular Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
- Brown Center for Biomedical Informatics, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
| | - Stephen Rong
- Center for Computational Molecular Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
- Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
| | - Fernando A Villanea
- Center for Computational Molecular Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
- Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado, USA
| | - Kelsey E Witt
- Center for Computational Molecular Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
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32
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Abstract
Archaic hominins in the Middle East underscore local demographic diversity in the last half million years
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33
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Richerson PJ, Gavrilets S, de Waal FBM. Modern theories of human evolution foreshadowed by Darwin's Descent of Man. Science 2021; 372:372/6544/eaba3776. [PMID: 34016754 DOI: 10.1126/science.aba3776] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/04/2020] [Accepted: 03/15/2021] [Indexed: 12/17/2022]
Abstract
Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man, published 150 years ago, laid the grounds for scientific studies into human origins and evolution. Three of his insights have been reinforced by modern science. The first is that we share many characteristics (genetic, developmental, physiological, morphological, cognitive, and psychological) with our closest relatives, the anthropoid apes. The second is that humans have a talent for high-level cooperation reinforced by morality and social norms. The third is that we have greatly expanded the social learning capacity that we see already in other primates. Darwin's emphasis on the role of culture deserves special attention because during an increasingly unstable Pleistocene environment, cultural accumulation allowed changes in life history; increased cognition; and the appearance of language, social norms, and institutions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Peter J Richerson
- Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA
| | - Sergey Gavrilets
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Department of Mathematics, National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA.
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Abstract
The tenets underlying the use of mtDNA in phylogenetic and systematic analyses are strict maternal inheritance, clonality, homoplasmy, and difference due to mutation: that is, there are species-specific mtDNA sequences and phylogenetic reconstruction is a matter of comparing these sequences and inferring closeness of relatedness from the degree of sequence similarity. Yet, how mtDNA behavior became so defined is mysterious. Even though early studies of fertilization demonstrated for most animals that not only the head, but the sperm's tail and mitochondria-bearing midpiece penetrate the egg, the opposite - only the head enters the egg - became fact, and mtDNA conceived as maternally transmitted. When midpiece/tail penetration was realized as true, the conceptions 'strict maternal inheritance', etc., and their application to evolutionary endeavors, did not change. Yet there is mounting evidence of paternal mtDNA transmission, paternal and maternal combination, intracellular recombination, and intra- and intercellular heteroplasmy. Clearly, these phenomena impact the systematic and phylogenetic analysis of mtDNA sequences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jeffrey H Schwartz
- Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
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Hajdinjak M, Mafessoni F, Skov L, Vernot B, Hübner A, Fu Q, Essel E, Nagel S, Nickel B, Richter J, Moldovan OT, Constantin S, Endarova E, Zahariev N, Spasov R, Welker F, Smith GM, Sinet-Mathiot V, Paskulin L, Fewlass H, Talamo S, Rezek Z, Sirakova S, Sirakov N, McPherron SP, Tsanova T, Hublin JJ, Peter BM, Meyer M, Skoglund P, Kelso J, Pääbo S. Initial Upper Palaeolithic humans in Europe had recent Neanderthal ancestry. Nature 2021; 592:253-257. [PMID: 33828320 PMCID: PMC8026394 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03335-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 54] [Impact Index Per Article: 18.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/07/2020] [Accepted: 02/05/2021] [Indexed: 02/01/2023]
Abstract
Modern humans appeared in Europe by at least 45,000 years ago1-5, but the extent of their interactions with Neanderthals, who disappeared by about 40,000 years ago6, and their relationship to the broader expansion of modern humans outside Africa are poorly understood. Here we present genome-wide data from three individuals dated to between 45,930 and 42,580 years ago from Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria1,2. They are the earliest Late Pleistocene modern humans known to have been recovered in Europe so far, and were found in association with an Initial Upper Palaeolithic artefact assemblage. Unlike two previously studied individuals of similar ages from Romania7 and Siberia8 who did not contribute detectably to later populations, these individuals are more closely related to present-day and ancient populations in East Asia and the Americas than to later west Eurasian populations. This indicates that they belonged to a modern human migration into Europe that was not previously known from the genetic record, and provides evidence that there was at least some continuity between the earliest modern humans in Europe and later people in Eurasia. Moreover, we find that all three individuals had Neanderthal ancestors a few generations back in their family history, confirming that the first European modern humans mixed with Neanderthals and suggesting that such mixing could have been common.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mateja Hajdinjak
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
- Francis Crick Institute, London, UK.
| | - Fabrizio Mafessoni
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Laurits Skov
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Benjamin Vernot
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Alexander Hübner
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
| | - Qiaomei Fu
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, IVPP, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Beijing, China
| | - Elena Essel
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Sarah Nagel
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Birgit Nickel
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Julia Richter
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Oana Teodora Moldovan
- Emil Racovita Institute of Speleology, Cluj Department, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
- Romanian Institute of Science and Technology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
| | - Silviu Constantin
- Department of Geospeleology and Paleontology, Emil Racovita Institute of Speleology, Bucharest, Romania
- Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana, CENIEH, Burgos, Spain
| | | | - Nikolay Zahariev
- Archaeology Department, New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria
| | - Rosen Spasov
- Archaeology Department, New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria
| | - Frido Welker
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
- Section for Evolutionary Genomics, GLOBE Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - Geoff M Smith
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Virginie Sinet-Mathiot
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | | | - Helen Fewlass
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Sahra Talamo
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
- Department of Chemistry 'G. Ciamician', University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Zeljko Rezek
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
- University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Svoboda Sirakova
- National Institute of Archaeology with Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria
| | - Nikolay Sirakov
- National Institute of Archaeology with Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria
| | - Shannon P McPherron
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Tsenka Tsanova
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Jean-Jacques Hublin
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
- Chaire de Paléoanthropologie, Collège de France, Paris, France
| | - Benjamin M Peter
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Matthias Meyer
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | | | - Janet Kelso
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Svante Pääbo
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
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Abstract
It was recently shown that the major genetic risk factor associated with becoming severely ill with COVID-19 when infected by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is inherited from Neandertals. New, larger genetic association studies now allow additional genetic risk factors to be discovered. Using data from the Genetics of Mortality in Critical Care (GenOMICC) consortium, we show that a haplotype at a region on chromosome 12 associated with requiring intensive care when infected with the virus is inherited from Neandertals. This region encodes proteins that activate enzymes that are important during infections with RNA viruses. In contrast to the previously described Neandertal haplotype that increases the risk for severe COVID-19, this Neandertal haplotype is protective against severe disease. It also differs from the risk haplotype in that it has a more moderate effect and occurs at substantial frequencies in all regions of the world outside Africa. Among ancient human genomes in western Eurasia, the frequency of the protective Neandertal haplotype may have increased between 20,000 and 10,000 y ago and again during the past 1,000 y.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hugo Zeberg
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany;
- Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, SE-17177 Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Svante Pääbo
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany;
- Human Evolutionary Genomics Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Okinawa 904-0495, Japan
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Mora-Bermúdez F, Taverna E, Huttner WB. From stem and progenitor cells to neurons in the developing neocortex: key differences among hominids. FEBS J 2021; 289:1524-1535. [PMID: 33638923 DOI: 10.1111/febs.15793] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/03/2020] [Revised: 02/19/2021] [Accepted: 02/25/2021] [Indexed: 01/05/2023]
Abstract
Comparing the biology of humans to that of other primates, and notably other hominids, is a useful path to learn more about what makes us human. Some of the most interesting differences among hominids are closely related to brain development and function, for example behaviour and cognition. This makes it particularly interesting to compare the hominid neural cells of the neocortex, a part of the brain that plays central roles in those processes. However, well-preserved tissue from great apes is usually extremely difficult to obtain. A variety of new alternative tools, for example brain organoids, are now beginning to make it possible to search for such differences and analyse their potential biological and biomedical meaning. Here, we present an overview of recent findings from comparisons of the neural stem and progenitor cells (NSPCs) and neurons of hominids. In addition to differences in proliferation and differentiation of NSPCs, and maturation of neurons, we highlight that the regulation of the timing of these processes is emerging as a general foundational difference in the development of the neocortex of hominids.
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Affiliation(s)
- Felipe Mora-Bermúdez
- Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany.,Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Elena Taverna
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Wieland B Huttner
- Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany
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Abstract
New finds in the palaeoanthropological and genomic records have changed our view of the origins of modern human ancestry. Here we review our current understanding of how the ancestry of modern humans around the globe can be traced into the deep past, and which ancestors it passes through during our journey back in time. We identify three key phases that are surrounded by major questions, and which will be at the frontiers of future research. The most recent phase comprises the worldwide expansion of modern humans between 40 and 60 thousand years ago (ka) and their last known contacts with archaic groups such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. The second phase is associated with a broadly construed African origin of modern human diversity between 60 and 300 ka. The oldest phase comprises the complex separation of modern human ancestors from archaic human groups from 0.3 to 1 million years ago. We argue that no specific point in time can currently be identified at which modern human ancestry was confined to a limited birthplace, and that patterns of the first appearance of anatomical or behavioural traits that are used to define Homo sapiens are consistent with a range of evolutionary histories.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anders Bergström
- Ancient Genomics Laboratory, Francis Crick Institute, London, UK
| | - Chris Stringer
- Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK.
| | - Mateja Hajdinjak
- Ancient Genomics Laboratory, Francis Crick Institute, London, UK
| | - Eleanor M L Scerri
- Pan-African Evolution Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.,Department of Classics and Archaeology, University of Malta, Msida, Malta.,Institute of Prehistoric Archaeology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
| | - Pontus Skoglund
- Ancient Genomics Laboratory, Francis Crick Institute, London, UK.
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Mitchell KJ, Rawlence NJ. Examining Natural History through the Lens of Palaeogenomics. Trends Ecol Evol 2021; 36:258-267. [PMID: 33455740 DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2020.10.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/31/2020] [Revised: 10/05/2020] [Accepted: 10/07/2020] [Indexed: 12/20/2022]
Abstract
The many high-resolution tools that are uniquely applicable to specimens from the Quaternary period (the past ~2.5 Ma) provide an opportunity to cross-validate data and test hypotheses based on the morphology and distribution of fossils. Among these tools is palaeogenomics - the genome-scale sequencing of genetic material from ancient specimens - that can provide direct insight into ecology and evolution, potentially improving the accuracy of inferences about past ecological communities over longer timescales. Palaeogenomics has revealed instances of over- and underestimation of extinct diversity, detected cryptic faunal migration and turnover, allowed quantification of widespread sex biases and sexual dimorphism in the fossil record, revealed past hybridisation events and hybrid individuals, and has highlighted previously unrecognised routes of zoonotic disease transfer.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kieren J Mitchell
- Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD), School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia; Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH), School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
| | - Nicolas J Rawlence
- Otago Palaeogenetics Laboratory, Department of Zoology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
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