| Science: Deciphering the DNA Code of Neanderthal Man |
[Jul. 25th, 2006|01:51 am] |
Science: Deciphering the DNA Code of Neanderthal Man
Posted by Zonk on Friday July 21, @01:44PM
from the hey-good-buddy dept.
smooth wombat writes
"U.S. and German scientists have embarked on a two-year long project to map the genetic code of Neanderthal man. Their hope is to gain a greater understanding of how modern human brains evolved. This study comes after last years completion of mapping the DNA of chimpanzees, our closest living relative."
From the article:
"Over two years, the scientists aim to reconstruct a draft of the 3 billion building blocks of the Neanderthal genome -- working with fossil samples from several individuals. They face the complication of working with 40,000-year-old samples, and of filtering out microbial DNA that contaminated them after death. Only about 5 percent of the DNA in the samples is actually Neanderthal DNA, Egholm estimated, but he and Rothberg said pilot experiments had convinced them that the decoding was feasible." |
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