In the lecture videos in this week’s lecture, we learned that the Neandertal is our closest relatives and neanderthals has actually left traces the genome of modern human beings.Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig worked on the decoding of the Neandertal genome for 20 years and compared it with the Homo sapiens genome. The researchers working with Svante Pääno decoded the Neandertal, and they had presented the gene sequence of the Neandertal for the first time and found that Neanderthal and modern human share about two and four percent in terms of genome. The process of research was difficult for scientists to avoid contamination of the fossil with both their DNA and DNA of bacteria remained on the bones. They collected most of the bones for the neanderthal project in a cave in Vindhya, Croatia, and adapted the ideal conditions of the cave to preserve the bones in the cleanroom in the lab which played an important role of the project. After they moved the bones, the researchers sequenced five additional genomes. After sequencing, they collected sample individuals from all over the world from different continents to compare with the neanderthal genome. They found out that neanderthals and early modern humans mixed, and they also found out that the trace of neandertals were distributed all over the world. It was interesting that how neanderthals had contributed to modern humans in region where they never really inhabited. Researcher’s hypothesis was that mixing with anatomical modern humans from africa about 100,000 and 50,000 years ago and immigrated to the middle east which happened before homo sapiens dominates the world and spread out all over the world. Therefore, homosapiens carried the genome trace to different places in different continents about 28,000 years ago. 

The researchers study not only to find out the genetic information of neandertal, but they also find out what they and modern humans share in common and what makes modern human different and unique. By comparing ourselves with neandertals they claim that the fox p2 gene that relates to the mental ability and linguistic ability is something what makes human different and unique. However, the lecture video noted that the certain gene also could benefited our closest relatives neanderthals. 

In my opinion, it was impressive that modern humans from even different continents share genetic trace of neanderthals(mostly inhabited in European and Asian continents) mixed with anatomical modern humans from africa in middle-east). Therefore, most of people with different continents probably have and share some portion of our DNA in common, and we have evolved for adaptation of certain environment to survive variously. I think the biggest contribution of these findings are to get to know ourselves and neanderthals much deeper and to know why they had become extinct and to prevent potential extinction of modern human potentially. In conclusion, people are diverse, but we share some portion of our DNA in common and it can be possible to be genetically similar to someone who is in another continent than my own which was really impressive to me that I never knew before.