Are humans evolving faster? Findings suggest we are becoming more different, not alike

http://www.physorg.com/news116529402.html

Researchers discovered genetic evidence that human evolution is speeding up – and has not halted or proceeded at a constant rate, as had been thought – indicating that humans on different continents are becoming increasingly different.

“We used a new genomic technology to show that humans are evolving rapidly, and that the pace of change has accelerated a lot in the last 40,000 years, especially since the end of the Ice Age roughly 10,000 years ago,” says research team leader Henry Harpending, a distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of Utah.

Harpending says there are provocative implications from the study, published online Monday, Dec. 10 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: -- “We aren’t the same as people even 1,000 or 2,000 years ago,” he says, which may explain, for example, part of the difference between Viking invaders and their peaceful Swedish descendants. “The dogma has been these are cultural fluctuations, but almost any temperament trait you look at is under strong genetic influence.” -- “Human races are evolving away from each other,” Harpending says. “Genes are evolving fast in Europe, Asia and Africa, but almost all of these are unique to their continent of origin. We are getting less alike, not merging into a single, mixed humanity.” He says that is happening because humans dispersed from Africa to other regions 40,000 years ago, “and there has not been much flow of genes between the regions since then.” “Our study denies the widely held assumption or belief that modern humans [those who widely adopted advanced tools and art] appeared 40,000 years ago, have not changed since and that we are all pretty much the same. We show that humans are changing relatively rapidly on a scale of centuries to millennia, and that these changes are different in different continental groups.” The increase in human population from millions to billions in the last 10,000 years accelerated the rate of evolution because “we were in new environments to which we needed to adapt,” Harpending adds. “And with a larger population, more mutations occurred.” Study co-author Gregory M. Cochran says: “History looks more and more like a science fiction novel in which mutants repeatedly arose and displaced normal humans – sometimes quietly, by surviving starvation and disease better, sometimes as a conquering horde. And we are those mutants.” Harpending conducted the study with Cochran, a New Mexico physicist, self-taught evolutionary biologist and adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Utah; anthropologist John Hawks, a former Utah postdoctoral researcher now at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; geneticist Eric Wang of Affymetrix, Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif.; and biochemist Robert Moyzis of the University of California, Irvine. No Justification for Discrimination The new study comes from two of the same University of Utah scientists – Harpending and Cochran – who created a stir in 2005 when they published a study arguing that above-average intelligence in Ashkenazi Jews – those of northern European heritage – resulted from natural selection in medieval Europe, where they were pressured into jobs as financiers, traders, managers and tax collectors. Those who were smarter succeeded, grew wealthy and had bigger families to pass on their genes. Yet that intelligence also is linked to genetic diseases such as Tay-Sachs and Gaucher in Jews. That study and others dealing with genetic differences among humans – whose DNA is more than 99 percent identical – generated fears such research will undermine the principle of human equality and justify racism and discrimination. Other critics question the quality of the science and argue culture plays a bigger role than genetics. Harpending says genetic differences among different human populations “cannot be used to justify discrimination. Rights in the Constitution aren’t predicated on utter equality. People have rights and should have opportunities whatever their group.” Analyzing SNPs of Evolutionary Acceleration The study looked for genetic evidence of natural selection – the evolution of favorable gene mutations – during the past 80,000 years by analyzing DNA from 270 individuals in the International HapMap Project, an effort to identify variations in human genes that cause disease and can serve as targets for new medicines. The new study looked specifically at genetic variations called “single nucleotide polymorphisms,” or SNPs (pronounced “snips”) which are single-point mutations in chromosomes that are spreading through a significant proportion of the population. Imagine walking along two chromosomes – the same chromosome from two different people. Chromosomes are made of DNA, a twisting, ladder-like structure in which each rung is made of a “base pair” of amino acids, either G-C or A-T. Harpending says that about every 1,000 base pairs, there will be a difference between the two chromosomes. That is known as a SNP. Data examined in the study included 3.9 million SNPs from the 270 people in four populations: Han Chinese, Japanese, Africa’s Yoruba tribe and northern Europeans, represented largely by data from Utah Mormons, says Harpending. Over time, chromosomes randomly break and recombine to create new versions or variants of the chromosome. “If a favorable mutation appears, then the number of copies of that chromosome will increase rapidly” in the population because people with the mutation are more likely to survive and reproduce, Harpending says.

“And if it increases rapidly, it becomes common in the population in a short time,” he adds. The researchers took advantage of that to determine if genes on chromosomes had evolved recently. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, with each parent providing one copy of each of the 23. If the same chromosome from numerous people has a segment with an identical pattern of SNPs, that indicates that segment of the chromosome has not broken up and recombined recently. That means a gene on that segment of chromosome must have evolved recently and fast; if it had evolved long ago, the chromosome would have broken and recombined. Harpending and colleagues used a computer to scan the data for chromosome segments that had identical SNP patterns and thus had not broken and recombined, meaning they evolved recently. They also calculated how recently the genes evolved. A key finding: 7 percent of human genes are undergoing rapid, recent evolution. The researchers built a case that human evolution has accelerated by comparing genetic data with what the data should look like if human evolution had been constant: -- The study found much more genetic diversity in the SNPs than would be expected if human evolution had remained constant. -- If the rate at which new genes evolve in Africans was extrapolated back to 6 million years ago when humans and chimpanzees diverged, the genetic difference between modern chimps and humans would be 160 times greater than it really is. So the evolution rate of Africans represents a recent speedup in evolution. -- If evolution had been fast and constant for a long time, there should be many recently evolved genes that have spread to everyone. Yet, the study revealed many genes still becoming more frequent in the population, indicating a recent evolutionary speedup. Next, the researchers examined the history of human population size on each continent. They found that mutation patterns seen in the genome data were consistent with the hypothesis that evolution is faster in larger populations. Evolutionary Change and Human History: Got Milk? “Rapid population growth has been coupled with vast changes in cultures and ecology, creating new opportunities for adaptation,” the study says. “The past 10,000 years have seen rapid skeletal and dental evolution in human populations, as well as the appearance of many new genetic responses to diet and disease.” The researchers note that human migrations into new Eurasian environments created selective pressures favoring less skin pigmentation (so more sunlight could be absorbed by skin to make vitamin D), adaptation to cold weather and dietary changes. Because human population grew from several million at the end of the Ice Age to 6 billion now, more favored new genes have emerged and evolution has speeded up, both globally and among continental groups of people, Harpending says. "We have to understand genetic change in order to understand history,” he adds. For example, in China and most of Africa, few people can digest fresh milk into adulthood. Yet in Sweden and Denmark, the gene that makes the milk-digesting enzyme lactase remains active, so “almost everyone can drink fresh milk,” explaining why dairying is more common in Europe than in the Mediterranean and Africa, Harpending says. He now is studying if the mutation that allowed lactose tolerance spurred some of history’s great population expansions, including when speakers of Indo-European languages settled all the way from northwest India and central Asia through Persia and across Europe 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. He suspects milk drinking gave lactose-tolerant Indo-European speakers more energy, allowing them to conquer a large area. But Harpending believes the speedup in human evolution “is a temporary state of affairs because of our new environments since the dispersal of modern humans 40,000 years ago and especially since the invention of agriculture 12,000 years ago. That changed our diet and changed our social systems. If you suddenly take hunter-gatherers and give them a diet of corn, they frequently get diabetes. We’re still adapting to that. Several new genes we see spreading through the population are involved with helping us prosper with high-carbohydrate diet.”

Source: University of Utah

Genetic Variation: We're More Different Than We Thought

November 23, 2006
Genetic Variation: We're More Different Than We Thought

New research shows that at least 10 percent of genes in the human population can vary in the number of copies of DNA sequences they contain—a finding that alters current thinking that the DNA of any two humans is 99.9 percent similar in content and identity.
This discovery of the extent of genetic variation, by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) international research scholar Stephen W. Scherer, and colleagues, is expected to change the way researchers think about genetic diseases and human evolution.
“It may be that some diseases are caused by copy number variation rather than SNPs.”Stephen W. Scherer
Genes usually occur in two copies, one inherited from each parent. Scherer and colleagues found approximately 2,900 genes—more than 10 percent of the genes in the human genome—with variations in the number of copies of specific DNA segments. These differences in copy number can influence gene activity and ultimately an organism's function.

Database of Genomic VariantsA close-up of variations on chromosome 17. more Image: Junjun Zhang
To get a better picture of exactly how important this type of variation is for human evolution and disease, Scherer's team compared DNA from 270 people with Asian, African, or European ancestry that had been compiled in the HapMap collection and previously used to map the single nucleotide changes in the human genome. Scherer's team mapped the number of duplicated or deleted genes, which they call copy number variations (CNVs). They reported their findings in the November 23, 2006, issue of the journal Nature.
Scherer, a geneticist at the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto, and colleagues searched for CNVs using microarray-based genome scanning techniques capable of finding changes at least 1,000 bases (nucleotides) long. A base, or nucleotide, is the fundamental building block of DNA. They found an average of 70 CNVs averaging 250,000 nucleotides in size in each DNA sample. In all, the group identified 1,447 different CNVs that collectively covered about 12 percent of the human genome and six to 19 percent of any given chromosome—far more widespread than previously thought.
Not only were the changes common, they also were large. "We'd find missing pieces of DNA, some a million or so nucleotides long," Scherer said. "We used to think that if you had big changes like this, then they must be involved in disease. But we are showing that we can all have these changes."
The group found nearly 16 percent of known disease-related genes in the CNVs, including genes involved in rare genetic disorders such as DiGeorge, Angelman, Williams-Beuren, and Prader-Willi syndromes, as well as those linked with schizophrenia, cataracts, spinal muscular atrophy, and atherosclerosis.
In related research published November 23, 2006, in an advance online publication in Nature Genetics, Scherer and colleagues also compared the two human genome maps—one assembled by Celera Genomics, Inc., and one from the public Human Genome Project. They found thousands of differences.
"Other people have [compared the two human genome sequences]," Scherer said, "but they found so many differences that they mostly attributed the results to error. They couldn't believe the alterations they found might be variants between the sources of DNA being analyzed."
A lot of the differences are indeed real, and they raise a red flag, he said.
Personalized genome sequencing—for individualized diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease—is not far off, Scherer pointed out. "The idea [behind comparing the human genome sequences] was to come up with a good understanding of what we're going to get when we do [personalized sequencing]," he explained. "This paper helps us think about how complex it will be."
In a "News and Views" article in the same issue of Nature, HHMI professor Huntington F. Willard writes, "the stage is set for global studies to explore anew…the clinical significance of human variation." Willard is director of the Institute for Genome and Science Policy at Duke University.
To fully extract meaningful data using the human genome maps, researchers must know what's missing and how much variation exists, Scherer said. "Our computer algorithms are smart, but it is hard to find something if it is not there in the reference you are comparing against."
In fact, Scherer's group found some 30 million nucleotides that are seemingly not yet represented at all, or in different copy numbers or orientations, when comparing the Celera assembly to the public human genome sequence. The entire human genome is thought to contain about 3 billion nucleotides.
The discovery of an abundance of DNA variation puts a whole new spin on the study of genetic disease. Most research has focused on small alterations, called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). It may be, said Scherer, that some diseases are caused by copy number variations rather than SNPs. In fact, recent research has already linked such variations to kidney disease, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and AIDS susceptibility.
The discovery also provides a new outlook on evolution.
"Until now, our focus has been on examining evolution through either small SNP changes or larger chromosomal alterations you can see under the microscope, because that's what we could detect," Scherer said. "But now there's a whole new class of mid-sized variants encompassing millions of nucleotides of DNA to consider."
This change in the way scientists think about human genetics is exciting, but it is still very early to know what all this means, said Scherer. "Though it does make you wonder, he added. "If you have 1 million fewer nucleotides than your buddy, shouldn't you get a break on your golf handicap?"

http://www.hhmi.org/news/scherer20061123.html

150 YEARS OF NEANDERTHAL DISCOVERIES

http://www.neandertal.uni-bonn.de/kongress_bonn/kongress.htm

150 YEARS OF NEANDERTHAL DISCOVERIES EARLY EUROPEANS - CONTINUITY & DISCONTINUITY July 21st – 26th, 2006 in Bonn, Germany The 150th anniversary of the discovery of the “Neanderthal Man” will be celebrated by an international congress held in Bonn from July 21st until July 26th, 2006. It is organized by the University of Bonn jointly with DEUQUA. The six day conference will include five half-day symposia and a field trip. The symposia will cover the following themes: 1. Neanderthal Origins, 2. Neanderthal Palaeoenvironment, 3. Neanderthal Lifeways, Subsistence and Technology, 4. Neanderthal Anatomy, Adaptation, Physical and Cultural Variations, 5. Neanderthals and Modern Humans. Each symposium will feature plenary lectures with invited speakers. Further contributions are welcome in the form of posters, for which two special sessions are scheduled. The posters will be ranked by the participants and the best ones will be awarded. The “Year of the Neanderthals” is celebrated in addition by three major exhibitions are devoted to the Neanderthals. In Bonn the exhibition “Roots - Wurzeln der Menschheit” at Rheinisches LandesMuseum a large number of the original hominid fossils from Europe, Africa and Asia will be on display. This exhibition will be accessible during the opening ceremony on July 21st. The two others “Close Encounters. Neanderthals – Hautnah” at Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann and the exhibition “climate and mankind. life in eXtremes - Leben in eXtremen) at the Westfälische Museum in Herne will be visited on a field trip on July 24th at which the recently relocated site of the famous 1856 discovery will be visited. In addition two field trips two the Quaternary volcanic field of the eastern and western and Eifel are offered by DEUQUA. The congress dinner will take place on a river cruise ship on the Rhine along the rolling hills of the Tertiary volcanoes of the Siebengebirge. This program has been put together by: Wighart v. Koenigswald and Thomas Litt (University of Bonn), Silvana Condemi (CNRS Marseille), Friedemann Schrenk (Senckenbergmuseum Frankfurt). Travel Information Online REGISTRATION is closed please register on-site when you arrive (excursions are fully booked) University of Bonn (Foto: M.Sondermann) City of Bonn (Foto: M.Sondermann)

PROGRAM print out your program

150 Years of Neanderthal Discoveries Early Europeans - Continuity & Discontinuity July 21st - 26th, 2006 At the University in Bonn, Germany

Friday July 21, 2006 DEUQUA- excursion to the Pleistocene volcanic field in the Eastern Eifel. Depature at 8:30 h at the University of Bonn, Geographisches Institut, Meckenheimer Allee 166. Return in time for the opening ceremony.(guide Hans-Ulrich Schmincke) In the Rheinisches LandesMuseum Bonn, Colmantstrasse 14: 17:00 h Registration and visit of the exhibition “Roots - Wurzeln der Menschheit” 18:30h opening ceremony and snacks 20:30h introduction lecture F. Clark Howell: Neanderthals and emergent paleoanthropology fifty years ago.

Saturday July 22, 2006 University of Bonn, Geographisches Institut, Meckenheimer Allee 166 site map pdf, 55kb 8:30 – 12:30 Symposium 1: Outside Europe and Neanderthal Origins Conveners: Silvana Condemi & Friedemann Schrenk - Respondent: Ian Tattersall Since the discovery of classical Neanderthal skeleton numerous fossil specimens have been found in various parts of Europe. These fossils have enabled us to show that Neanderthals were an autochthonous population in Europe and that the differentiation of this lineage occurred over a long period of time, which lasted at least 450.000 years. What is the relationship of the Neanderthal population and the early hominids discovered in Europe? What are its phylogenetic relations with populations known today in Africa and in Asia? Can one speak of a cultural particularity for the Neanderthals? 1.1 Chris Stringer: The Middle Pleistocene Records of Western Eurasia and Africa, and the Evolution of Neanderthals and Modern Humans 1.2 Liu Wu: The Hominid Fossils from China Contemporaneous to the Neanderthals and some Related Studies 1.3 Naama Goren-INBAR: Behavioral and Cultural Origins of Neanderthals: A Levantine Perspective 1.4 Francesco Mallegni: The Earliest European Peopling after the Recent Discoveries: Early Neanderthals or Different Lineages? 14:00 – 18:00 Symposium 2: Neanderthal Palaeoenvironment Conveners : Wighart v. Koenigswald & Thomas Litt - Respondent: Clark F. Howell Dramatic climatic changes altered the environment of the Neanderthal population during the middle and upper Pleistocene. Although the general sequence of the climatic changes is known from the deep sea record, we are far from establishing a stable stratigraphy sequence for the terrestrial realm. The fauna and flora reacted very differently to the climatic changes in the various regions, which be discussed in a geographical framework. The regional conditions in central and western Europe will be compared with those in the Mediterranean. 2.1. Chronis Tzedakis: Climate Change and Vegetation Response in the Mediterranean During the Middle and Late Pleistocene 2.2 Thomas Litt: Climatostratigraphy and Paleoecology of the Middle and Upper Pleistocene in North-Central Europe Based on Paleobotanical Data 2.3 Tassos Kotsakis: Evolution of the Vertebrate Pleistocene Faunas in the Mediterranean Area. 2.4 Wighart v. Koenigswald: Climatic Changes, Faunal Diversity, and Environment of the Neanderthals in Central and Western Europe During the Middle and Upper Pleistocene 2.5 Andrei Sher: Pleistocene Faunal and Environmental Evolution in Siberia: Adding a North-Eastern Dimension to the European Story 20:00 Public lecture at the LandesMuseum Bonn (Colmantstrasse 14) Ralf W. Schmitz: Neue Ergebnisse zum namengebenden Neanderthaler und zu seiner wiederentdeckten Fundstelle. (New results on the Neanderthal type Specimen and on the Rediscovered Locality). Sunday July 23, 2006 University of Bonn, Geographisches Institut, Meckenheimer Allee 166 8:30 – 12:30 Symposium 3: Neanderthal lifeways, subsistence and technology Conveners: Nicholas Conard & Jürgen Richter - Respondent: Paul A. Mellars This symposium will present the key archaeological data and ideas that have allowed researchers to reconstruct the lifeways of the Neanderthals. The speakers draw examples across the temporal and spatial range of Neanderthals and critically assess current interpretations. Lectures will address patterns of subsistence and nutrition based on faunal and isotopic analyses. Lithic artifacts and ,when preserved, organic artifacts provide insight into the technology that Neanderthals used in the diverse geographic and climatic zones that they occupied. By pooling the information available from multiple sources, speakers will critically examine models for land use, demographic patterning, and social structures to present an up-to-date assessment of the behavioral patterns of the Neanderthals. 3.1 Hervé Bocherens: Diet and Ecology of Neanderthals 3.2. Eric Boeda: Neanderthal Lithic Technology 3.3 Clive Gamble: Social Organization and Settlement Dynamics of Neanderthals 3.4 Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser: Neanderthal Subsistence Behaviour in Northwestern Europe 3.5. Steven Louis Kuhn: The Economics and Organisation of Neanderthal Technology 14:00 – 18:00 Postersession 1 14:00 – 18:00 Deuqua Session 1 Conveners: Frank Preusser & Ernst Brunotte Rhine session and Archeological sites D1.1 Gerald Gabriel et al.: The Heidelberg Drilling Project (Upper Rhine Graben, Germany) D1.2 Peter Fischer & Ernst Brunotte: Late Quaternary Landscape Evolution and Soil Formation in the Range of the Loess Covered Middle Terraces in the Central Lower Rhine Embayment D1.3 Hans Axel Kemna: Pliocene and Early Pleistocene Chronostratigraphy of Middle and Northwestern Europe Based on Pollen Analysis: an Errant Concept and a New Approach D1.4 Andreas Dehnert: Burial Dating of Fluvial Sediments from the Lower Rhine Embayment, Germany D1.5 F.S. Busschers: Imprints of Climate Change, Sea-Level Oscillations and Glacio-Hydro-Isostacy in the Rhine-Meuse Sedimentary Record (the Netherlands) Archeological sites D1.6 Daniela C. Kalthoff: The Fossil Vertebrate Fauna from the Neanderthal – Results and Problems of New Findings from the Type Locality of Homo Neanderthalensis D1.7 Ulrich Hambach et al. : Magnetic Susceptibility Stratigraphy and Enviromagnetics of Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Cave Sediments from Southern Germany (Hunas Cave Ruin, Franconia and Hohle Fels, Swabia) D1.8 Wilfried Rosendahl et al.: The Neandertalien Site Hunas: 50 ky (OIS 5b – OIS 3) Climate and Environment History in Southern Germany D1.9 Markus Fiebig et al.: Human Palaeoenvironment in the Eastern Alps during the Last Glacial Cycle Cruise boat on the River Rhine (Foto: M.Sondermann) Congress-Dinner in a River boat on the Rhine 19:00 h boarding and 19:30 h departure at pier near the “Alter Zoll” for the Congress-Dinner in a River boat “Wappen von Bonn” on the Rhine Monday July 24, 2006 8:30 h depature for both excursions at the University of Bonn, Geographisches Institut, Meckenheimer Allee 166. Excursion to type locality in the Neanderthal and the exhibitions “Close Encounters. Neanderthals – Hautnah” at Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann and “climate and mankind. life in eXtremes - Leben in eXtremen” at the Westfälische Museum in Herne. - This excursion is fully booked!! DEUQUA- excursion to the Pleistocene volcanic field in the Western Eifel. Both excursions will end at the reception of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Bonn-Bad Godesberg, Jean-Paul Str. 12 at 18:00h. Tuesday July 25, 2006 University of Bonn, Geographisches Institut, Meckenheimer Allee 166 8:30 – 12:30 Symposium 4: Neanderthal Anatomy, Adaptation, Physical and Cultural Variations Conveners: Silvana Condemi & Winfried Henke - Respondent: Patricia Smith After 150 years studying of Neanderthals, what do we really know about them? Which of their anatomical traits permit us to recognize and define them? What do we know about their growth and development? Do their morphological features result from adaptation to the particular climate of the middle Pleistocene? Does the Neanderthal pattern indicate long-term isolation in Europe or even speciation? The Neanderthals inhabited a vast geographic area extending from Portugal to Uzbekistan, and from northern Europe to the Near East. This raises the question concerning the homogeneity of the Neanderthal population. Is it possible to identify local variations in such a large areas? Can one recognize sub-groups? 4.1 Jean-Jacques Hublin: Neanderthal as an Other Humankind: Where are we now? 4.2 Anne-Marie Tillier: Palaeauxology Applied to Neanderthals 4.3 PATRICIA SMITH et al.: Computerized Reconstruction of Prenatal Growth Trajectories in the Dentition: Implications for the Taxonomic Status of Neandertals 4.4 Leslie Aiello: Neanderthals, Energetics and Evolution 4.5 Bernard Vandermeersch & M. D. Garralda: The Geographical and Chronological Variation of the Neanderthals. 14:00 – 18:00 Postersession 2 14:00 – 18:00 Deuqua Session 2 D2.1 Frank Preusser & Christian Schlüchter: Middle to Late Quaternary stratigraphy of Switzerland and correlation with high-resolution marine records D2.2 Birgit Terhorst et al.: Loess/paleosol sequences as stratigraphical database of the Brunhes Chron in Upper Austria D2.3 Brigitte Urban: Pleistocene Pollen Records from Schöningen, North Germany D2.4 Norbert Kühl et al.: Reconstruction and comparison of the climatic evolution of middle and upper Pleistocene warm periods and the Holocene D2.5 Sven Lukas et al.: Glaciation during the Younger Dryas in Europe’s mountains – an overview of climatic implications D2.6 Jürgen M. Reitner et al. : The sturzstrom event of Feld (Matrei/Eastern Tyrol/Austria): A forgotten catastrophe during early human settlement in the Alps? D2.7 Naki Akçar et al.: Cosmogenic dating (exposure and/or burial) of stone artifacts: additional dating tool in archeology? 17:00 General assemblage of the DEUQUA members 20:00 Reception at the roof terrace of the LandesMuseum Bonn, Colmantstrasse 14 21:00 Presentation of movies concerning early man Wednesday July 26, 2006 University of Bonn, Geographisches Institut, Meckenheimer Allee 166 8:30 – 12:30 Symposium 5: Neanderthals and Modern Humans Conveners: Gerd-C. Weniger & Jörg Orschiedt - Respondent: Milford Wolpoff The question “what happened during the contact between Neanderthals and early Modern Humans” is an evergreen. For decades there seemed to be a clear cultural borderline between the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic and a clear biological borderline between Neanderthals and early Moderns. Furthermore both borderlines were supposed to fit exactly one onto the other. Today the idea is growing that the situation was much more sophisticated and complex. The session will try to identifying some of the smallest common denominators within the plethora of opinions. 5.1 Svante Pääbo: Neanderthal Genomics 5.2 Olaf Jöris, Martin Street,Thomas Terberger & Bernhard Weninger: Dating the Transition 5.3 Eric Trinkaus: Late Neandertals and Early Modern Humans: Biology, Behavior and Population Dynamics 5.4 Joao Zilhao: Patterns of Cultural Variability During the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic Transition in Europe 5.5. Roberto Macchiarelli & Gerd-C. Weniger: NESPOS: From Data Accumulation to Data Management 14:00 - 16:00 Round Table discussion: Future Perspectives in the Study of Neanderthals Awarding of poster prize and closing ceremony Travel Information Online REGISTRATION is closed please register on-site when you arrive (excursions are fully booked)

For further Information, contact: neanderthal@uni-bonn.de

Significant original literature: Some early literature on the Neanderthal-find (will be completed) Anonymous: Fundnotitz in der Elberfelder Zeitung vom 6.9.1856 (pdf 1) Fuhlrott (1859). Menschliche Überreste aus einer Felsengrotte des Düsselthals. - Verh. des Naturhist. Vereins der preußischen Rheinlande, 16: 131-153; (pdf 2) King (1864). The reputed fossil man of the Neanderthal. - Quaterly Journal of Science, 1: 88-97; (pdf 3) Klaatsch (1901): Das Gliedmaßenskelett des Neanderthalmenschen. - Anatomischer Anzeiger 19 (Ergänzungabnd) 121-154. (pdf 4) Koenen (1904). Eigenart und Zeitfolge des Knochengerüstes der Urmenschen. - Sitzungsbericht der Niederrheinischen Gesellsch. für Natur- und Heilkunde, A 19-38 (pdf 5) Rauff (1903). Das geologische Alter des Neandertaler Menschen. - Sitzungsberichte der Niederrheinischen Gesellsch. für Natur- und Heilkunde zu Bonn, 1903: 38-48 (Sitzung vom 9.2.1903) (pdf 6) Rauff (1903). Über die Neandertalfrage. - Sitzungsberichte der Niederrheinischen Gesellsch. für Natur- und Heilkunde zu Bonn 1903: 87-101; Bonn. (Sitzung vom 7.12.1903). (pdf 7) Rauff (1904). Über die Altersbestimmung des Neandertaler Menschen und die geologische Grundlage dafür. - Verh. des Naturhist. Vereins der preußischen Rheinlande, 60: 11-90 + Tafel 1; Bonn. (pdf 8) Fuhlrott (1854). Menschliche Ueberreste aus einer Felsengrotte des Düsselthals - Verh. des Naturhist. Vereins der preußischen Rheinlande, 16: 131-153; Bonn. (pdf 9) Schaaffhausen (1859). Zur Kenntnis der ältesten Rassenschädel (pdf 10) Schwalbe (1901). Der Neanderthalschädel (pdf 11) Virchow (1872). (pdf 12)

Geneticists shoot for Neanderthal genome in two years

News Published online: 20 July 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060717-13 http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060717/full/060717-13.html Geneticists shoot for Neanderthal genome in two years Plans to sequence our cousins are unveiled at anniversary meeting. Rex Dalton & Nicola Jones DNA from Neanderthals (artist's impression above) is hard to find. © T. MCHUGH / SPL We have the modern human genome. Now researchers are set to sequence the DNA of our extinct cousins: Neanderthal man. The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, in collaboration with 454 Life Sciences Corporation, in Branford, Connecticut, today announce a plan to have a first draft of the Homo neanderthalensis genome within two years. Comparing the result to modern human and other primate genomes should help to clarify the evolutionary relationship between humans and Neanderthals. It may also illuminate the genetic changes that enabled humans to leave Africa and rapidly spread around the world around 100,000 years ago. The chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) has already been sequenced and stands ready to be compared to Neanderthals (see Chimp genome special). The US National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) has set a goal of sequencing the genome of at least one genome from each of the major positions along the evolutionary primate tree, including the rhesus macaque, orangutan, marmoset, northern white-cheeked gibbon and gorilla. DNA hunt The announcement comes as scientists gather in Bonn, Germany, this week to mark the 150th anniversary of the discovery of Neanderthal man — made in Germany's Neander Valley. During 21-26 July, experts will debate all aspects of Neanderthal life, from how they migrated across Europe to what effect climate may have had on their evolution. They will also debate how to find more and better samples to work with (see Palaeoanthropology: Decoding our cousins). Getting clean genetic material out of such ancient bones is a challenging task. The DNA of the bacteria and fungi that degrade a body after it dies tends to get mixed up with the DNA of the host. And what hominin DNA does survive is usually broken up into small bits over time. But there are ways to reduce these problems — including using skeletons left from cannibalistic societies, where no flesh was left on the bones for bacteria to eat. "The dream to find Neanderthal DNA started in the early 1980s," says Paabo. "The problems with contamination were difficult; I almost gave up at times. But now we have new technologies and fossils free of contamination." The Leipzig team has already sequenced about one million base pairs of nuclear Neanderthal DNA from a 38,000-year-old Croatian fossil. That success was reported by Svante Pääbo, director of the Institute's department of evolutionary genetics, at a meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York this May. But they have a long way to go; the entire genome is thought to be 3 billion letters long. Mother's own In addition to Pääbo's work with the Croatian fossil, there have been successes with mitochondrial DNA — a portion of the genome that tends to be better preserved, but which makes up only a tiny fraction of the entire sequence and is passed down only through the female line. Almost ten years ago, Pääbo succeeded in sequencing Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA. More recently, such DNA was extracted from a 100,000-year-old Neanderthal fossil found in Belgium. But a map of the nuclear DNA will prove the real prize, revealing much more about the Neanderthal genetic make-up. The project will extract the nuclear DNA from bones or teeth from both the first Neanderthal specimen ever discovered, and some additional bones found in Croatia. Visit our newsblog to read and post comments about this story. Palaeoanthropology: Decoding our cousins 19 July 2006 Cave bear DNA laid bare 02 June 2005 Neanderthal DNA yields to genome foray 16 May 2006 Chimp genome special Neanderthal meeting

Ancient Etruscans unlikely ancestors of modern Tuscans, statistical testing reveals

Ancient Etruscans unlikely ancestors of modern Tuscans, statistical testing reveals from PhysOrg.com

For the first time, Stanford researchers have used novel statistical computer modeling to simulate demographic processes affecting the population of Tuscany over a 2,500-year time span. Rigorous tests used by the researchers have ruled out a genetic link between ancient Etruscans, the early inhabitants of central Italy, and the region's modern day residents.
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Scan of Human Genome Reveals More than 700 Recently Evolving Genes

Still Evolving, Human Genes Tell New Story

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: March 7, 2006
Providing the strongest evidence yet that humans are still evolving, researchers have detected some 700 regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection, a principal force of evolution, within the last 5,000 to 15,000 years.

The genes that show this evolutionary change include some responsible for the senses of taste and smell, digestion, bone structure, skin color and brain function.
Many of these instances of selection may reflect the pressures that came to bear as people abandoned their hunting and gathering way of life for settlement and agriculture, a transition well under way in Europe and East Asia some 5,000 years ago.
Under natural selection, beneficial genes become more common in a population as their owners have more progeny.
Three populations were studied, Africans, East Asians and Europeans. In each, a mostly different set of genes had been favored by natural selection. The selected genes, which affect skin color, hair texture and bone structure, may underlie the present-day differences in racial appearance.
The study of selected genes may help reconstruct many crucial events in the human past. It may also help physical anthropologists explain why people over the world have such a variety of distinctive appearances, even though their genes are on the whole similar, said Dr. Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society.
The finding adds substantially to the evidence that human evolution did not grind to a halt in the distant past, as is tacitly assumed by many social scientists. Even evolutionary psychologists, who interpret human behavior in terms of what the brain evolved to do, hold that the work of natural selection in shaping the human mind was completed in the pre-agricultural past, more than 10,000 years ago.
"There is ample evidence that selection has been a major driving point in our evolution during the last 10,000 years, and there is no reason to suppose that it has stopped," said Jonathan Pritchard, a population geneticist at the University of Chicago who headed the study.
Dr. Pritchard and his colleagues, Benjamin Voight, Sridhar Kudaravalli and Xiaoquan Wen, report their findings in today's issue of PLOS-Biology.
Their data is based on DNA changes in three populations gathered by the HapMap project, which built on the decoding of the human genome in 2003. The data, though collected to help identify variant genes that contribute to disease, also give evidence of evolutionary change.
The fingerprints of natural selection in DNA are hard to recognize. Just a handful of recently selected genes have previously been identified, like those that confer resistance to malaria or the ability to digest lactose in adulthood, an adaptation common in Northern Europeans whose ancestors thrived on cattle milk.
But the authors of the HapMap study released last October found many other regions where selection seemed to have occurred, as did an analysis published in December by Robert K. Moysis of the University of California, Irvine.
Dr. Pritchard's scan of the human genome differs from the previous two because he has developed a statistical test to identify just genes that have started to spread through populations in recent millennia and have not yet become universal, as many advantageous genes eventually do.
The selected genes he has detected fall into a handful of functional categories, as might be expected if people were adapting to specific changes in their environment. Some are genes involved in digesting particular foods like the lactose-digesting gene common in Europeans. Some are genes that mediate taste and smell as well as detoxify plant poisons, perhaps signaling a shift in diet from wild foods to domesticated plants and animals.
Dr. Pritchard estimates that the average point at which the selected genes started to become more common under the pressure of natural selection is 10,800 years ago in the African population and 6,600 years ago in the Asian and European populations.
Dr. Richard G. Klein, a paleoanthropologist at Stanford, said that it was hard to correlate the specific gene changes in the three populations with events in the archaeological record, but that the timing and nature of the changes in the East Asians and Europeans seemed compatible with the shift to agriculture. Rice farming became widespread in China 6,000 to 7,000 years ago, and agriculture reached Europe from the Near East around the same time.
Skeletons similar in form to modern Chinese are hard to find before that period, Dr. Klein said, and there are few European skeletons older than 10,000 years that look like modern Europeans.
That suggests that a change in bone structure occurred in the two populations, perhaps in connection with the shift to agriculture. Dr. Pritchard's team found that several genes associated with embryonic development of the bones had been under selection in East Asians and Europeans, and these could be another sign of the forager-to-farmer transition, Dr. Klein said.
Dr. Wells, of the National Geographic Society, said Dr. Pritchard's results were fascinating and would help anthropologists explain the immense diversity of human populations even though their genes are generally similar. The relative handful of selected genes that Dr. Pritchard's study has pinpointed may hold the answer, he said, adding, "Each gene has a story of some pressure we adapted to."
Dr. Wells is gathering DNA from across the globe to map in finer detail the genetic variation brought to light by the HapMap project.
Dr. Pritchard's list of selected genes also includes five that affect skin color. The selected versions of the genes occur solely in Europeans and are presumably responsible for pale skin. Anthropologists have generally assumed that the first modern humans to arrive in Europe some 45,000 years ago had the dark skin of their African origins, but soon acquired the paler skin needed to admit sunlight for vitamin D synthesis.
The finding of five skin genes selected 6,600 years ago could imply that Europeans acquired their pale skin much more recently. Or, the selected genes may have been a reinforcement of a process established earlier, Dr. Pritchard said.
The five genes show no sign of selective pressure in East Asians.
Because Chinese and Japanese are also pale, Dr. Pritchard said, evolution must have accomplished the same goal in those populations by working through different genes or by changing the same genes — but many thousands of years before, so that the signal of selection is no longer visible to the new test.
Dr. Pritchard also detected selection at work in brain genes, including a group known as microcephaly genes because, when disrupted, they cause people to be born with unusually small brains.
Dr. Bruce Lahn, also of the University of Chicago, theorizes that successive changes in the microcephaly genes may have enabled the brain to enlarge in primate evolution, a process that may have continued in the recent human past.
Last September, Dr. Lahn reported that one microcephaly gene had recently changed in Europeans and another in Europeans and Asians. He predicted that other brain genes would be found to have changed in other populations.
Dr. Pritchard's test did not detect a signal of selection in Dr. Lahn's two genes, but that may just reflect limitations of the test, he and Dr. Lahn said. Dr. Pritchard found one microcephaly gene that had been selected for in Africans and another in Europeans and East Asians. Another brain gene, SNTG1, was under heavy selection in all three populations.
"It seems like a really interesting gene, given our results, but there doesn't seem to be that much known about exactly what it's doing to the brain," Dr. Pritchard said.
Dr. Wells said that it was not surprising the brain had continued to evolve along with other types of genes, but that nothing could be inferred about the nature of the selective pressure until the function of the selected genes was understood.
The four populations analyzed in the HapMap project are the Yoruba of Nigeria, Han Chinese from Beijing, Japanese from Tokyo and a French collection of Utah families of European descent. The populations are assumed to be typical of sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and Europe, but the representation, though presumably good enough for medical studies, may not be exact.
Dr. Pritchard's test for selection rests on the fact that an advantageous mutation is inherited along with its gene and a large block of DNA in which the gene sits. If the improved gene spreads quickly, the DNA region that includes it will become less diverse across a population because so many people now carry the same sequence of DNA units at that location.
Dr. Pritchard's test measures the difference in DNA diversity between those who carry a new gene and those who do not, and a significantly lesser diversity is taken as a sign of selection. The difference disappears when the improved gene has swept through the entire population, as eventually happens, so the test picks up only new gene variants on their way to becoming universal.
The selected genes turned out to be quite different from one racial group to another. Dr. Pritchard's test identified 206 regions of the genome that are under selection in the Yorubans, 185 regions in East Asians and 188 in Europeans. The few overlaps between races concern genes that could have been spread by migration or else be instances of independent evolution, Dr. Pritchard said.

http://www-news.uchicago.edu/citations/06/060307.pritchard-nyt.html

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/518466/?sc=dwhn

The Balts and the Finns

The Balts and the Finns in historical perspective: a multidisciplinary approach



Introduction. Ethnic history of human populations is a too complicated phenomenon to elucidate it on the basis of several gene frequencies. It is obligatory to compile all data on molecular genetics and serology, to add new ones, to request services of paleopopulation comparisons, facts of anthropological odontology, craniology, and anthropology of the modern population of the area as well as linguistic and archaeological information. A multidisciplinary approach to elucidating historical relations between the Balts and the Finns is the goal of the present report. Materials and methods. Approx. 800 blood samples from Lithuania were examined in order to investigate Lithuanian population according to different genetic markers. Discrete cranial traits of 6,426 skulls from Lithuania and adjacent territories as well as 3,734 skulls belonging to the Neolithic, Bronze Age, 2,000 YBP and 1,000 YBP were investigated. We disposed of data on the ethnic odontology of 4,993 modern Lithuanians as well as of 1446 skulls dated to 2,000 YBP and 1,000 YBP. Results. Two separate clusters consisting consequently of four Baltic and two Finnish groups emerged in the dendrogram (Fig. 1).The mesocranial Mesolithic population in Lithuania might be related to the Middle-European kernel of mesocranes. The Middle-European orientation of the Neolithic and Bronze Age Lithuanian population is evident. The influx from the eastern part of the ancient Baltic area was detected in the 2,000 YBP population. The Lithuanian 1,000 YBP population was more homogeneous than the inhabitants of Latvia (Fig. 2). The Y chromosome haplogroups 1 and 9 show complementary clines from southeast to northwest of Europe, the Baltic peoples (Latvians and Lithuanians) demonstrating a mixture of western and eastern genetic traits (Fig. 3). In Northern Europe, strong geographical, linguistic and cultural barriers can be identified. Three main migration directions could have a real influence on the formation of the Lithuanian gene pool. Conclusions. Anthropological, archaeological and linguistic data demonstrate that there was no common ancestry of the Balts and the Finns. Genetic and phenetical similarities might occur due to gene exchange between adjacent populations on the northern and eastern borderlines of the ancient Baltic area that took place from the Mesolithic time. It is impossible to date the emergence of some genetic and anthropological similarities between the Balts and the Finns.
http://images.katalogas.lt/maleidykla/act43/A-08.pdf