« The Ethics of Indifference
Main
Endangered Assets: Local Public Libraries »
March 9, 2005
70,000 Year Old Neanderthal Protein Sequenced
Eurekalert reported yesterday that researchers at the Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Liepzig, Germany and Washington University in St. Louis sequenced a protein from the ~70,000 old Neanderthal skeleton from Shanidar Cave in Iraq. The news report lacks details but the following offers a flavor of the results.
The research presents the sequence for the bone protein osteocalcin from a Neanderthal from Shandivar Cave as well as osteocalcin sequences from living primates (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans). The team found that the Neanderthal sequence was the same as modern humans.The team also found a marked difference in the sequences of Neanderthals, humans, chimpanzees and orangutans from that of gorillas and most other mammals. This sequence difference is at position nine where the amino acid hydroxyproline is replaced by proline.
I don't believe this speaks to the question of H. sapiens and H. neanderthals being the same or different species. This is not a gene sequence and even if it were, it would need to be understood in the context of the other work on Neanderthal and Modern Human gene sequences. See, Fossil Hominids: mitochondrial DNA by Jim Foley and the references he gives for a discussion of this issue. It does raise an interesting question about the place of orangutans among the great apes. Most accounts that I have read have orangutans branching off before the ancestors of modern gorillas, chimpanzees and humans (See Fleage, Primate Adoption and Evolution, p. 9 or 479 or Boyd and Silk, How Humans Evolved, p. 101 for just two examples). This protein study may indicate that ancestral gorillas branched first.
More latter, the research paper should be available soon (March 7-11, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
Posted by Duane Smith at March 9, 2005 10:37 AM | Read more on Paleoanthropology |
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telecomtally.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1077