Roche media release: Neandertal man sheds light on modern genome

Postdoctoral scientist, Dr. Ed Green, a speaker at the annual Roche Diagnostics Forum held in Johannesburg on 10 October, says that “it is now possible to rule out anything but a very minor genetic contribution from Neanderthal, which is likely to be zero.”

Dr. Green is a member of the team headed up by Prof Svante Pääbo, Director of the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, which has been sequencing the Neanderthal genome since July 2006.

The genetic sequencing of the ill-fated European Neanderthal who died out mysteriously approximately 28 000 – 30 000 years ago, intends to shed greater light on those genes that are unique to modern man by comparing Neanderthal to modern humans genetically.

“We will be able to find those genes that have changed since we separated from Neanderthals. These are the very genes that make us fully modern humans. They may also be responsible for the behavioral and biological differences that set modern humans apart from all other animals and from earlier Homo forms such as habilis and erectus,” Green explains.

The collaborators have already sequenced approximately one million base pairs of nuclear Neanderthal DNA from a 38,000-year-old Croatian fossil using Roche's newly developed 454 Life Sciences' sequencing technology.

According to Green, this technology has now made it possible to extract and sequence nuclear DNA from Neanderthal fossils. This would have been a hopeless task using traditional techniques. The new technology has also given considerable impetus to the field of ancient DNA research which has been around for about 20 years now but only recently really took off.

The first Neanderthal fossil was discovered in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf, Germany 151 years ago. Ever since that time, paleontologists and anthropologists have been striving to uncover the role of these stockpile-built early humans in modern human evolution who lived in Europe and parts of Asia until they disappeared about 30,000 years ago.

The team of collaborators at the Max Planck Institute is currently taking the next leap in Neanderthal research by sequencing the entire 3 billion base pairs that made up their genome. They will then compare the Neanderthal genome to the already sequenced human and chimpanzee genomes. This will clarify the evolutionary relationship between humans and Neanderthals as

well as help identify those genetic changes that enabled modern humans to leave Africa and rapidly spread around the world starting around 100,000 years ago.
The annual Roche Diagnostics Forum focuses on bringing together opinion leaders and decision-makers from the healthcare sector to engage one-on-one on pertinent issues in the field of medicine in general and laboratory medicine, in particular.

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Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is one of the world's leading research-focused healthcare groups in the fields of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. As the world's biggest biotech company and an innovator of products and services for the early detection, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases, the Group contributes on a broad range of fronts to improving people's health and quality of life. Roche is the world leader in in-vitro diagnostics and drugs for cancer and transplantation, a market leader in virology and active in other major therapeutic areas such as autoimmune diseases, inflammation, metabolic disorders and diseases of the central nervous system. In 2006 sales by the Pharmaceuticals Division totalled 33.3 billion Swiss francs, and the Diagnostics Division posted sales of 8.7 billion Swiss francs. Roche has R&D agreements and strategic alliances with numerous partners, including majority ownership interests in Genentech and Chugai, and invests approximately 7 billion Swiss francs a year in R&D. Worldwide, the Group employs about 75,000 people. Additional information is available on the Internet at www.roche.com.