DNA sharing with Neandertal's

[Nick Thompson]

See, perhaps:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/04/AR2010100405700_2.html?waporef=obinsite&sid=ST2010100405975

“Subsequent research this year concluded that 1 to 4 percent of the modern human genome comes from Neanderthals, making the link tighter. And while the percentage may seem small, Riel-Salvatore says it has to be understood in context. Neanderthals, he said, probably never reached a total population greater than hundreds of thousands, while Homo sapiens came in far greater numbers.”

REALLY?  What’s the denominator?  Does “genome” refer to the “genes”, in which case the denominator consists of the 1 percent of the stuff on the chromosomes” that actually codes for a protein.  No wait a minute.  We share 99 percent of that with a chimpanzee, right?  So, the denominator would be the proportion of the genes (codons) that we DON’T share with chimpanzees, that we DO share with neandertals.  No. that’s not right either.  We presumably share almost a 100 percent of our genes with neandertals.  Can anybody help me figure this out?

Nick

 

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[lrudolph]

On 7 Oct 2010 at 12:58, Nicholas  Thompson wrote:

> See, perhaps:
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/04/AR2010100405
> 700_2.html?waporef=obinsite
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/04/AR201010040
> 5700_2.html?waporef=obinsite&sid=ST2010100405975> &sid=ST2010100405975
>
> "Subsequent research this year concluded that 1 to 4 percent of the modern
> human genome comes from Neanderthals, making the link tighter. And while the
> percentage may seem small, Riel-Salvatore says it has to be understood in
> context. Neanderthals, he said, probably never reached a total population
> greater than hundreds of thousands, while Homo sapiens came in far greater
> numbers."
>
> REALLY?  What's the denominator?  Does "genome" refer to the "genes", in
> which case the denominator consists of the 1 percent of the stuff on the
> chromosomes" that actually codes for a protein.  No wait a minute.  We share
> 99 percent of that with a chimpanzee, right?  So, the denominator would be
> the proportion of the genes (codons) that we DON'T share with chimpanzees,
> that we DO share with neandertals.  No. that's not right either.  We
> presumably share almost a 100 percent of our genes with neandertals.  Can
> anybody help me figure this out?

There's probably no point in trying to "figure out" a
newspaper reporter's version of what a scientific paper
(or even its interviewed author) may or may not have said.
So I won't click on the link before going on my errands;
and with luck an answer will have appeared by the time
I get back.

However, *perhaps* there's a clue in the choice of the
phrase "comes from", which might mean something distinct
from "shared with".  After all, *none* of the human
genome "comes from" chimpanzees, no matter how much of
it is "shared with" chimpanzees.  But if this article
is related to one I recently saw, which asserted that
(1) yes, Neanderthals were a different species from
_Homo sapiens sapiens_ (just as chimpanzees are), but
(2) the two species could and did produce significant
numbers of fertile hybrids (which is not the case with
Homo and Pan, I believe), then it would indeed be so
that some of the modern _Homo sapiens sapiens_ genome
could be said to be "shared with" both the genome of
pre-interbreeding Hss and the Neanderthal genome; and
it might even be possible to decide what, and/or how
much.

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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