Pääbo lecture in Oxford

Svante Pääbo is giving a talk tonight for the Keble College Advanced Studies Centre on his work into the Neanderthal genome.

The talk was broadcast live online and it is still possible to watch it again here :

http://new.livestream.com/oxuni/origins

A week after the talk more than 1700 views have bene made of the video!

Abstract

In 2010, the first draft version of the Neandertal genome revealed that Neandertal have contributed genetic material to present-day humans living outside Africa. Recently, we have completed a genome sequence of high quality of a Neandertal individual and also of a Denisovan individual, representing a hitherto unknown Asian group related to Neandertals. These genomes reveal that up to about 2.0% of the genomes of people in Eurasia derive from Neandertals while about 4.8% of the genomes of people living in Oceania derive from Denisovans. I will discuss what is currently known about the functional consequences of the Neandertal inheritance in present-day humans. I will also describe how the Neandertal genome allows novel genomic features that appeared in present-day humans since their divergence from the Neandertal lineage to be identified and discuss how they may be functionally analyzed in the future.