Word: pã
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...years later, a team led by P??äbo announced that the human version of a gene called FOXP2, which plays a role in our ability to develop speech and language, evolved within the past 200,000 years--after anatomically modern humans first appeared. By comparing the protein coded by the human FOXP2 gene with the same protein in various great apes and in mice, they discovered that the amino-acid sequence that makes up the human variant differs from that of the chimp in just two locations out of a total of 715--an extraordinarily small change that...
...rudiments of what we would call art. They were advanced--but nothing like what humans have done in the last 10,000 to 15,000 years." We eventually outcompeted them, and the key to how we did so may well lie in our genes. So two years ago, Svante P??äbo, the man who deconstructed the FOXP2 language gene and has done considerable research on ancient DNA, launched an effort to re-create the Neanderthal genome. Rubin, meanwhile, is tackling the same task using a different technique...
...time, and bones that lie in the ground for thousands of years become badly contaminated with the DNA of bacteria and fungi. Anyone who handles the fossils can also leave human DNA behind. After probing the remains of about 60 different Neanderthals out of the 400 or so known, P??äbo and his team found only two with viable material. Moreover, he estimates, only about 6% of the genetic material his team extracts from the bones turns out to be Neanderthal...
...result, progress is maddeningly slow. And while he can't reveal details, P??äbo says he'll soon be announcing in a major scientific journal the sequencing of 1 million base pairs of the Neanderthal genome. And he says he has 4 million more in the bag. Rubin, meanwhile, is also poised to publish his results, but refuses to divulge specifics. "P??äbo's team has significantly more of a sequence than we do," he says. "Some of the dates will differ, but the conclusions are largely similar...
...Although P??äbo admits that he still hasn't learned much about what distinguishes us from our closest cousins, simply showing he can reconstruct significant DNA sequences from such long-dead creatures is an important proof of concept. Both he and Rubin agree that within a couple of years a reasonably complete Neanderthal genome should be available. "It will tell us about aspects of biology, like soft tissue, that we can't say anything about right now," Rubin notes. "It could tell us about disease susceptibility and immunity. And in places where the sequence overlaps that of humans...