
Most People Carry Neanderthal Genes - jseliger
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703686304575228380902037988.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories
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dkarl
_"I really think when you get up to 2%-to-5% genetic overlap, it is probably
not wise to think of these as a separate species," said anthropologist Fred
Smith at Illinois State University who studies Neanderthals._

By some other measurement, we have 96% overlap with chimpanzees, right? It's
ridiculous for science journalists to use numbers without bothering explaining
them.

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mechanical_fish
Of course, the original article in the journal _Science_ probably contains
much more context, but ( _pet peeve alert_ ) the newspaper doesn't provide a
link, and even if they did it would probably cost a bunch of money to read it.

Non-free journals _delenda est_.

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carbocation
Fun things they did:

(1) Tagging the DNA in a clean room. (2) Digesting CpG sites, which are more
prevalent in microbes, to make the rest of their work easier. (3) Used allele
frequencies to determine that all 3 source bones come from different
individuals, though 2 likely share the same mother based on mtDNA analysis.
(4) Determined that all bones were from women. (5) Determined that Neandertals
are closer to non-Africans than to Africans.

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carbocation
Original article (Science magazine, free full-text):
<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/710>

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joubert
I also share genes with bananas and fish.

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eru
But you are not a descendant of bananas or most fish.

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joubert
We share a common ancestor

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eru
Yes. But that's not what the article was about. Modern humans and
Neanderthalians share much more genetic material than the 4% the article
talked about.

The 4% is the proportion of genetic material we inherited from them. And
that's an interesting and non-trivial thing.

So Neanderthalians were some of our ancestors. But bananas weren't.

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joubert
Speciation paradox

~~~
eru
?

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forinti
Life is a mess.

