I continue to find it amazing how much we’ve learned about Neanderthals through genetics.

I continue to find it amazing how much we’ve learned about Neanderthals through genetics.

Originally shared by Able Lawrence

First sequence of Neanderthal Y chromosome dates human-neandethal split at approximately six hundred thousand years ago.

It so happened that most neanderthal remains sequenced earlier were female so that it took a long time to get a Y chromosome haplotypes. Wait until we have more of those before we know about the diversity of y chromosomes at the population level.

The Divergence of Neandertal and Modern Human Y Chromosomes

www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297(16)30033-7

Sequencing the genomes of extinct hominids has reshaped our understanding of modern human origins. Here, we analyze ∼120 kb of exome-captured Y-chromosome DNA from a Neandertal individual from El Sidrón, Spain. We investigate its divergence from orthologous chimpanzee and modern human sequences and find strong support for a model that places the Neandertal lineage as an outgroup to modern human Y chromosomes—including A00, the highly divergent basal haplogroup. We estimate that the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of Neandertal and modern human Y chromosomes is ∼588 thousand years ago (kya) (95% confidence interval [CI]: 447–806 kya). This is ∼2.1 (95% CI: 1.7–2.9) times longer than the TMRCA of A00 and other extant modern human Y-chromosome lineages. This estimate suggests that the Y-chromosome divergence mirrors the population divergence of Neandertals and modern human ancestors, and it refutes alternative scenarios of a relatively recent or super-archaic origin of Neandertal Y chromosomes. The fact that the Neandertal Y we describe has never been observed in modern humans suggests that the lineage is most likely extinct. We identify protein-coding differences between Neandertal and modern human Y chromosomes, including potentially damaging changes to PCDH11Y, TMSB4Y, USP9Y, and KDM5D. Three of these changes are missense mutations in genes that produce male-specific minor histocompatibility (H-Y) antigens. Antigens derived from KDM5D, for example, are thought to elicit a maternal immune response during gestation. It is possible that incompatibilities at one or more of these genes played a role in the reproductive isolation of the two groups.

https://anthropology.net/2016/04/09/modern-males-lack-neanderthal-y-chromosome-genes/