Summary of Svante Pääbo: DNA clues to our inner neanderthal

00:00:00 - 00:15:00

Svante Pääbo, a leading researcher in human genetics, discusses the genetic similarities and differences between contemporary humans and extinct human species. He notes that while modern humans originated in Africa, people outside of Africa have traces of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA, which suggests that there is not an absolute difference between Africans and people living outside of Africa. Pääbo believes that people have always mixed and that this is a recurring trend, with modern humans likely mixing with earlier human species in Africa.

• 00:00:00 DNA sequencing has allowed scientists to study the genomes of living people and extinct humans, revealing that our genetic similarities extend far back in our evolutionary history and that genetic variation is generally distributed widely across the world.
• 00:05:00 The DNA of different groups of people varies greatly, which has surprised many people. The amount of variance found in a person's genome can be used to estimate their ancestral location, but this information is not 100 percent accurate. There are certain traits that we see in different parts of the world that are not determined by a single gene, but by many variants.
• 00:10:00 Svante Pääbo's team used DNA sequencing to reconstruct the Neanderthal genome, and found that it differed significantly from modern human genomes. They also found evidence that modern humans and Neanderthals had interacted in Southern Siberia.
• 00:15:00 Svante Pääbo, a leading researcher in human genetics, discussed the genetic similarities and differences between contemporary humans and extinct human species. He noted that while modern humans originated in Africa, people outside of Africa have traces of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA, which suggests that there is not an absolute difference between Africans and people living outside of Africa. Pääbo believes that people have always mixed and that this is a recurring trend, with modern humans likely mixing with earlier human species in Africa.