Emily is a health news writer based in London, United Kingdom. She holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Durham University and a master's degree in clinical and therapeutic neuroscience from Oxford University. She has worked in science communication, medical writing and as a local news reporter while undertaking journalism training.
The group had traveled for thousands of miles, crossing Africa and the Middle East until finally reaching the dimly lit forests of the new continent. They were long-vanished members of our modern human tribe, and among the first Homo sapiens to enter Europe.These small bands of modern-human relatives had hooded brows, large heads and squat bodies, and they had spent epochs acclimating to Europe's colder climate.
By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.Related: Could Neanderthals talk? But some Neanderthal DNA helped modern humans survive and reproduce, and thus it has lingered in our genomes. Nowadays, Neanderthal DNA occupies, on average, 2% of the genomes of people outside Africa. However, the frequency of Neanderthal DNA that codes for beneficial traits may be as high as 80% in some regions of the genome, Akey said.
Neanderthals had spent millennia at higher latitudes with less direct sun exposure, which is needed for vitamin D production. Therefore, changes to hair and skin biology may have allowed modern humans to quickly capitalize on lower levels of sunlight while still producing enough vitamin D to be healthy, John Capra, an evolutionary geneticist at Vanderbilt University, told Live Science.
This may have helped our ancestors adapt to shorter winter days farther from the equator, Capra said. For the most part, Neanderthal genes are not strongly expressed in the brain, which hints that they were strongly selected against during evolution. Neanderthal genes have been linked to mood disorders such as depression and to brain signaling pathways that make people more likely to become addicted to nicotine.
That's especially true for some of the biggest health ailments, such as heart disease and cancer, where dozens or hundreds of genes, along with myriad environmental factors, affect your risk of disease.So how long will the traces of these long-lost humans linger in our genomes? Over hundreds of thousands of years, some of these Neanderthal fragments will gradually be eliminated from our genomes. Others will become firmly embedded, Akey said.
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