UC Berkeley Finds 2 Ghost Hominin Lineages in Human DNA Using TRACE
Updated
Updated · Yahoo! Voices · Aug 7
UC Berkeley Finds 2 Ghost Hominin Lineages in Human DNA Using TRACE
3 articles · Updated · Yahoo! Voices · Aug 7
Summary
At least two previously unidentified archaic lineages left DNA in modern humans, with one introgression event occurring before the out-of-Africa expansion and affecting all present-day populations.
TRACE—a new UC Berkeley framework built to detect super-archaic ancestry—flagged genome regions that were neither Neanderthal nor Denisovan, including a lineage that likely entered human ancestors about 300,000 years ago.
Researchers said the mystery ancestry accounts for roughly 1% of the human genome, while archaic hominin DNA overall makes up about 2%, and Oceanian Denisovan ancestry also carried signs of even older lineages.
The source species remain unknown—possibly Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis—and the study said more ancient genomes from Africa and Asia are needed to pin down when the interbreeding happened and what those genes did.