Neanderthal Genome Project

The Neanderthal genome project is an effort of a group of scientists to sequence the Neanderthal genome.

It is coordinated by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, and was initiated by 454 Life Sciences, a biotechnology company based in Branford, Connecticut in the United States. Founded in July 2006, the project published their results in the May 2010 journal Science detailing an initial draft of the Neanderthal genome based on the analysis of four billion base pairs of Neanderthal DNA. The study determined that some mixture of genes occurred between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans and presented evidence that elements of their genome remain in that of modern humans outside Africa.

In December 2013, scientists reported, for the first time, a high coverage genome of a Neanderthal. The genome was extracted from the bone fragment of a Neanderthal female from around 50,000-100,000 years ago, found in a cave in the Altai mountains of Siberia.

According to preliminary sequences, 99.7% of the nucleotide sequences of the modern human and Neanderthal genomes are identical, compared to humans sharing around 98.8% of sequences with the chimpanzee. (For some time, studies concerning the commonality between chimps and humans modified the commonality of 99% to a commonality of only 94%, showing that the genetic gap between humans and chimps was far larger than originally thought, but more recent knowledge states the difference between humans, chimpanzees and bonobos at just about 1%-1.2% again.)

The researchers recovered ancient DNA of Neanderthals by extracting the DNA from the femur bones of three 38,000-year-old female Neanderthal specimens from Vindija Cave, Croatia, and other bones found in Spain, Russia, and Germany. Only about half a gram of the bone samples (or 21 samples each 50–100 mg) was required for the sequencing, but the project faced many difficulties, including the contamination of the samples by the bacteria that had colonized the Neanderthal's body and humans who handled the bones at the excavation site and at the laboratory.

...
Wikipedia