Just 7 per cent of our DNA is unique to modern humans, study shows - The Indian Express

Scientists already know that modern people share some DNA with Neanderthals, but different people share different parts of the genome.

One goal of the new research was to identify the genes that are exclusive to modern humans It’s a difficult statistical problem, and the researchers “developed a valuable tool that takes account of missing data in the ancient genomes,” said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the research.

“We can tell those regions of the genome are highly enriched for genes that have to do with neural development and brain function,” said University of California, Santa Cruz computational biologist Richard Green, a co-author of the paper.

Since then, scientists have continued to refine techniques to extract and analyze genetic material from fossils “Better tools allow us to ask increasingly more detailed questions about human history and evolution,” said Akey, who is now at Princeton and was not involved in the new research.