BPadvertisementfrom

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Thursday, 30 August 2012

Genomic secrets of the dead: high-coverage Denisovan sequence

Posted on 15:33 by Unknown
This new technique may make it easier to obtain sequences of long dead individuals whose burial sites are known.
Science: A High-Coverage Genome Sequence from an Archaic Denisovan Individual 
We present a DNA library preparation method that has allowed us to reconstruct a high-coverage (30X) genome sequence of a Denisovan, an extinct relative of Neandertals. The quality of this genome allows a direct estimation of Denisovan heterozygosity, indicating that genetic diversity in these archaic hominins was extremely low. It also allows tentative dating of the specimen on the basis of “missing evolution” in its genome, detailed measurements of Denisovan and Neandertal admixture into present-day human populations, and the generation of a near-complete catalog of genetic changes that swept to high frequency in modern humans since their divergence from Denisovans.
Science News and Analysis: ... As the international team reports in a paper published online in Science this week, more than 99% of the nucleotides are sequenced at least 10 times, so researchers have as sharp a picture of this ancient genome as of a living person's. “No one thought we would have an archaic human genome of such quality,” Meyer says. “Everyone was shocked by the counts. That includes me.” 
That precision allows the team to compare the nuclear genome of this girl, who lived in Siberia's Denisova Cave more than 50,000 years ago, directly to the genomes of living people, producing a “near-complete” catalog of the small number of genetic changes that make us different from the Denisovans, who were close relatives of Neandertals. “This is the genetic recipe for being a modern human,” says team leader Svante Pääbo, a paleogeneticist at the institute. 
Ironically, this high-resolution genome means that the Denisovans, who are represented in the fossil record by only one tiny finger bone and two teeth, are much better known genetically than any other ancient human—including Neandertals, of which there are hundreds of specimens. The genome offers a glimpse of what the Denisovan girl looked like—her eyes, hair, and skin were brown—and new details about how her lineage evolved. The team confirms that the Denisovans interbred with the ancestors of some living humans and found that Denisovans had little genetic diversity, suggesting that their small population waned further as populations of modern humans expanded. 
... By binding special molecules to the ends of a single strand, the ancient DNA was held in place while enzymes copied its sequence. The result was a sixfold to 22-fold increase in the amount of Denisovan DNA sequenced from a meager 10-milligram sample from the girl's finger. The team was able to cover 99.9% of the mappable nucleotide positions in the genome at least once, and more than 92% of the sites at least 20 times, which is considered a benchmark for identifying sites reliably. 
... Most exciting to Pääbo is the “nearly complete catalog” of differences in genes between the groups. This includes 111,812 single nucleotides that changed in modern humans in the past 100,000 years or so.
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Posted in evolution, genomics | No comments
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • PhD Comics: the movie
    PHD Movie Trailer from PHD Comics on Vimeo . I met Jorge Cham , the cartoonist who draws PhD Comics, a few years ago at Sci Foo. Cham was ...
  • Finding the Next Einstein
    Duke researcher Jonathan Wai interviewed me for his Psychology Today blog, Finding the Next Einstein . Below are my answers to two of his q...
  • Beanbags and causal variants
    Not only do these results implicate common causal variants as the source of heritability in disease susceptibility, but they also suggest th...
  • Sitzfleisch
    Freeman Dyson reviews the new biography of Oppenheimer by Ray Monk. I discussed the book already here . NYBooks : ... The subtitle, “A Life ...
  • A blog is born
    Raghu Parasarathy , a biophysicist at U Oregon, and my correspondent in this previous post on faculty blogging, has decided to try it out. ...
  • News from Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2013
    Measuring the maximal commuting subset of observables uniquely determines the pure state of a quantum system (recently proved Kadison-Singer...
  • Talk cancelled
    This talk has been cancelled, for complex reasons that I will not discuss.
  • East Asian sociopaths?
    Some would assert that CEOs and other people in leadership positions are often warm sociopaths . Interestingly, it is claimed that there is ...
  • Swedish height in the 20th century
    Average height of Swedish military conscripts during the 20th century. Looks like an increase of roughly 1 cm per decade or about 1.5 SD in ...
  • The differences are enormous
    Luis Alvarez laid it out bluntly: The world of mathematics and theoretical physics is hierarchical. That was my first exposure to it. There...

Categories

  • ability (2)
  • academia (9)
  • affirmative action (8)
  • ai (13)
  • aig (1)
  • alan turing (3)
  • algorithms (2)
  • alpha (2)
  • american society (54)
  • art (3)
  • ashkenazim (1)
  • aspergers (4)
  • athletics (6)
  • autism (4)
  • autobiographical (13)
  • basketball (4)
  • bayes (1)
  • behavioral economics (4)
  • berkeley (5)
  • bgi (24)
  • biology (23)
  • biotech (6)
  • bjj (5)
  • black holes (4)
  • blade runner (2)
  • blogging (3)
  • books (5)
  • borges (2)
  • bounded rationality (10)
  • brainpower (57)
  • bubbles (3)
  • caltech (14)
  • cambridge uk (1)
  • careers (18)
  • charles darwin (1)
  • chet baker (2)
  • China (25)
  • christmas (1)
  • class (2)
  • cognitive science (35)
  • cold war (1)
  • complexity (1)
  • computing (9)
  • conferences (4)
  • cosmology (4)
  • creativity (3)
  • credit crisis (10)
  • crossfit (5)
  • cryptography (2)
  • data mining (4)
  • dating (2)
  • demographics (1)
  • derivatives (5)
  • determinism (1)
  • digital books (1)
  • dna (4)
  • economic history (5)
  • economics (38)
  • econtalk (2)
  • ecosystems (1)
  • education (5)
  • efficient markets (8)
  • Einstein (2)
  • elitism (14)
  • encryption (1)
  • energy (1)
  • entrepreneurs (3)
  • entropy (1)
  • environmentalism (1)
  • eugene (3)
  • evolution (19)
  • expert prediction (6)
  • fake alpha (2)
  • feminism (2)
  • Fermi problems (2)
  • feynman (7)
  • film (9)
  • finance (42)
  • fitness (3)
  • flynn effect (1)
  • foo camp (1)
  • football (5)
  • france (1)
  • free will (1)
  • freeman dyson (2)
  • fx (2)
  • game theory (1)
  • geeks (2)
  • gender (4)
  • genetic engineering (15)
  • genetics (79)
  • genius (24)
  • genomics (2)
  • geopolitics (7)
  • gilded age (13)
  • global warming (1)
  • globalization (23)
  • godel (2)
  • goldman sachs (2)
  • google (4)
  • happiness (2)
  • harvard (8)
  • harvard society of fellows (5)
  • hedge funds (4)
  • hedonic treadmill (1)
  • height (2)
  • higher education (38)
  • history (8)
  • history of science (12)
  • hormones (3)
  • hugh everett (2)
  • human capital (34)
  • humor (1)
  • income inequality (21)
  • india (2)
  • industrial revolution (1)
  • innovation (38)
  • intellectual history (10)
  • intellectual property (1)
  • intellectual ventures (1)
  • internet (4)
  • iq (16)
  • italy (4)
  • james salter (3)
  • japan (4)
  • jiujitsu (8)
  • keynes (1)
  • kids (13)
  • lewontin fallacy (1)
  • lhc (1)
  • literature (12)
  • luck (1)
  • machine learning (8)
  • malcolm gladwell (1)
  • manhattan (2)
  • many worlds (10)
  • mathematics (14)
  • meritocracy (7)
  • microsoft (2)
  • mma (10)
  • monsters (2)
  • moore's law (1)
  • movies (9)
  • MSU (18)
  • music (5)
  • mutants (2)
  • nathan myhrvold (1)
  • neal stephenson (1)
  • neanderthals (2)
  • nerds (3)
  • net worth (5)
  • neuroscience (7)
  • new yorker (1)
  • nicholas metropolis (1)
  • noam chomsky (2)
  • nobel prize (2)
  • nsa (2)
  • nuclear weapons (5)
  • obama (7)
  • olympics (4)
  • oppenheimer (7)
  • patents (1)
  • personality (9)
  • philip k. dick (1)
  • philosophy of mind (2)
  • photos (40)
  • physical training (13)
  • physics (73)
  • podcasts (10)
  • political correctness (6)
  • politics (4)
  • pop culture (2)
  • prisoner's dilemma (1)
  • privacy (2)
  • probability (5)
  • prostitution (2)
  • psychology (25)
  • psychometrics (31)
  • qcd (1)
  • quants (9)
  • quantum computers (2)
  • quantum field theory (3)
  • quantum mechanics (18)
  • race relations (10)
  • real estate (1)
  • realpolitik (6)
  • renaissance technologies (1)
  • research (3)
  • russia (2)
  • sad but true (2)
  • sci fi (8)
  • science (42)
  • sec (1)
  • security (5)
  • silicon valley (6)
  • singularity (1)
  • smpy (1)
  • social networks (2)
  • social science (12)
  • software development (2)
  • solar energy (1)
  • sports (13)
  • startups (19)
  • statistics (16)
  • success (2)
  • taiwan (1)
  • talks (16)
  • teaching (2)
  • technology (34)
  • television (2)
  • travel (24)
  • turing test (1)
  • ufc (8)
  • ultimate fighting (1)
  • universities (33)
  • university of oregon (6)
  • usain bolt (2)
  • venture capital (3)
  • volatility (1)
  • von Neumann (10)
  • wall street (2)
  • war (1)
  • warren buffet (1)
  • wwii (3)

Blog Archive

  • ►  2013 (134)
    • ►  August (10)
    • ►  July (15)
    • ►  June (22)
    • ►  May (20)
    • ►  April (21)
    • ►  March (18)
    • ►  February (14)
    • ►  January (14)
  • ▼  2012 (222)
    • ►  December (17)
    • ►  November (19)
    • ►  October (20)
    • ►  September (25)
    • ▼  August (19)
      • Genomic secrets of the dead: high-coverage Denisov...
      • Back in the MACT
      • Beating down hash functions
      • deCODE, de novo mutations, and autism risk
      • Genomic prediction: no bull
      • Recent human evolution: European height
      • "For the historians and the ladies"
      • Better to be lucky than good
      • Knightmare
      • Chomsky on po-mo
      • On doping
      • Gell-Mann, Feynman, Everett
      • The greatest of all time
      • The path not taken
      • Quantum correspondence
      • Curiosity has landed
      • Bolt, again!
      • Correlation, Causation and Personality
      • $440M in 45 minutes
    • ►  July (18)
    • ►  June (16)
    • ►  May (20)
    • ►  April (16)
    • ►  March (18)
    • ►  February (20)
    • ►  January (14)
  • ►  2011 (144)
    • ►  December (20)
    • ►  November (16)
    • ►  October (25)
    • ►  September (23)
    • ►  August (21)
    • ►  July (26)
    • ►  June (13)
Powered by Blogger.

About Me

Unknown
View my complete profile