An American takes a genetic test. Instead of a family reunion, he gets an unusual insight into the past: he apparently has a particularly high amount of Neanderthal DNA.
New York City – Americans are obsessed with their origins. It is not uncommon for someone from the USA on the percent know exactly which countries their ancestors come from. Genetic tests for home use are therefore very popular. One man apparently wanted to find out more about his family and discovered that he had more Neanderthal DNA than 99 percent of the other people tested.
Homo sapiens meets Neanderthals: Genetic test reveals prehistoric relatives
Modern humans, Homo sapiens, and the Neanderthals both belong to the genus Homo, but developed in parallel. The last common ancestor is considered to be Homo erectus. At times, Homo sapiens and Neanderthals lived on earth at the same time and are said to have Research near – common Children This could also be indicated by a genetic test that the American Dennis “DWayne” Deel recently undertook. The result: The American had more Neanderthal DNA than 99 percent of the other customers of the genetic testing company, as he told the magazine Newsweek reported.
That sounds quite remarkable, since millions of people have already investigated their genetic origins in this way. He wears his Neanderthalheritage “like a badge of honour” said Deel about the result to Newsweek and added: “People think I’m a bit strange when I tell them that I’m part Neanderthal.” Now he hopes that his story will generate enough interest “so that I can get to know my Neanderthal relatives.” What is certain is that the Neanderthals became extinct around 40,000 years ago – so Deel is definitely a Homo sapiens.
Spit as a key to the past: How rare is Neanderthal DNA really?
Anyone who buys such a home genetic test sends in saliva or a mouth swab. The companies then extract the DNA from these cells, as the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has shown in its Magazine explainsThis information is examined for around 600,000 places where the human DNA code often differs. “The analysis includes the review of more than 2,000 genetic variants of known Neanderthal origin that are scattered throughout the genome,” says the company “23andMe,” which also examined Deel’s sample. Neanderthal DNA is apparently not quite so unusual after all: “Evidence of Neanderthal DNA can now be found in trace amounts in almost all modern humans,” the company says on its website.
“The percentage of Neanderthal DNA in modern humans is zero or close to zero in people from African populations and about one to two percent in people with European or Asian backgrounds,” says Medlinethe information portal of the US National Institute of Health. The fact that a person living today has a “significant” amount of Neanderthal DNA could “indicate a significant “Crossbreeding” between Neanderthals and early modern humans in the ancestry of this person, commented Cesar de la Fuente of the University of Pennsylvania to Newsweek.
Controversial genetic tests: three tests, three results
However, the validity of home genetic tests is controversial. For example, a journalist from Healthista had their DNA analyzed by three different companies – and received three different results. “The problem with such tests is that you cannot determine which genetic markers the companies are actually testing, you cannot carry out any quality control,” explained the director of the Institute of Human Genetics at the Ludwig Maximilian University MunichOrtrud Steinlein, the South German Newspaper.
Despite all the differences and conflicts in the world, there is also one important realization that has long been known: we are in many ways more similar than it seems, because in fact 99.9 percent of human DNA is identical. A scientific study recently concluded that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals may have been more similar than previously thought. The results suggest “comparable cognitive abilities in both anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals,” the researchers said. (bme).
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