Saturday, July 30, 2016

OLDEST HUMAN ANCESTOR IN HOMO ERECTUS SPECIES WAS IN INDIA 1.8 MILLION YEARS AGO


JUL

26

Homo erectus in India 1.8 million years ago: Mystery ancient human ancestor found in Australasian family tree 

DAILY NEWS
  
 25 July 2016

Mystery ancient human ancestor found in Australasian family tree

People at sunset
Go west? Or go east?
Penny Tweedie/Panos Pictures
By Alice Klein
Who’s your daddy? An unknown hominin species that bred with early human ancestors when they migrated from Africa to Australasia has been identified through genome mapping of living humans.
The genome analysis also questions previous findings that modern humans populated Asia in two waves from their origin in Africa, finding instead a common origin for all populations in the Asia-Pacific region, dating back to a single out-of-Africa migration event.
Modern humans first left Africa about 60,000 years ago, with some heading west towards Europe, and others flowing east into the Asia-Pacific region.
Previous research looking at the genomes of people living today has revealed that the Asia-Pacific arrivals mated with two hominin species they found there – the Neanderthals and the Denisovans.

Mysterious ancestor

But when Jaume Bertranpetit at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain and his colleagues analysed the genomes of living Indigenous Australians, Papuans, people from the Andaman Islands near India, and from mainland India, they found sections of DNA that did not match any previously identified hominin species.
These DNA sequences are not present in the genomes of living Europeans or east Asians, suggesting that the ancestors of these people met and bred with a mystery hominin in south Asia or the Pacific region, who left their genetic legacy in the area’s present-day populations.
The unidentified hominin may be Homo erectus or “upright man”, says Bertranpetit. H. erectus is believed to be the first hominin with a similar stature to today’s humans, and the first to leave Africa.

Ancient DNA needed

Fossil records indicate that H. erectus was present in Asia between about 1.8 million and 33,000 years ago, so there could have been an overlap with humans towards the end of its existence.
“But we do not have any direct evidence,” says Bertranpetit. Confirmation would require a match between ancient DNA from H. erectus remains and DNA from current Australasian populations.
Unfortunately, none of the H. erectus fossils unearthed to date contain sufficient genomic data for this kind of comparison to be made, says Alan Cooper of the University of Adelaide, Australia. “Until we find a skeleton that is preserved well enough, we won’t be able to generate a whole genome like we’ve done with the Denisovans,” he says.

Many groups

The Denisovan genome was derived from a well-preserved finger bone found in a cave in Siberia, but such findings are rare, especially in the hot climate of Asia. “We may never find another preserved hominin in Asia,” Cooper says.
Making the story even more complicated is the possibility that multiple unknown hominin species contributed to the mystery DNA snippets, says Cooper. “I wouldn’t be surprised – Asia is a bit of a nightmare in terms of the number of different groups that were running around at the same time,” he says.
Asia has turned out to have many more hominin forms than Europe, Cooper says.
“There is a tidal wave of studies coming out now on Australian and Asian genomes and they’re all concluding the same thing – there was a single out–of-Africa movement of modern humans,” says Cooper. “Europeans headed west, and everybody else headed east. And then within Asia, it became horribly complicated in terms of the movement, because there were several hominins floating around in that space – Denisovans, Neanderthals and now this third group.”
Journal reference: Nature Genetics, DOI: 10.1038/ng.3621
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2098566-mystery-ancient-human-ancestor-found-in-australasian-family-tree/#.V5bglj1mfmQ.twitter

Genomic analysis of Andamanese provides insights into ancient human migration into Asia and adaptation

Nature Genetics
 
(2016)
 
doi:10.1038/ng.3621
Received
  
31 December 2015 
 
Accepted
  
17 June 2016 
 
Published online
  
25 July 2016

NATURE GENETICS | LETTER

Genomic analysis of Andamanese provides insights into ancient human migration into Asia and adaptation

Nature Genetics
 
 
doi:10.1038/ng.3621
Received
 
Accepted
 
Published online
 
To shed light on the peopling of South Asia and the origins of the morphological adaptations found there, we analyzed whole-genome sequences from 10 Andamanese individuals and compared them with sequences for 60 individuals from mainland Indian populations with different ethnic histories and with publicly available data from other populations. We show that all Asian and Pacific populations share a single origin and expansion out of Africa, contradicting an earlier proposal of two independent waves of migration1, 2, 3, 4. We also show that populations from South and Southeast Asia harbor a small proportion of ancestry from an unknown extinct hominin, and this ancestry is absent from Europeans and East Asians. The footprints of adaptive selection in the genomes of the Andamanese show that the characteristic distinctive phenotypes of this population (including very short stature) do not reflect an ancient African origin but instead result from strong natural selection on genes related to human body size.

Subject terms:

At a glance

Figures

First | 1-3 of 3 | Last
left
  1. Ancestry of Indian populations.
    Figure 1
  2. Fewer African-derived alleles in Indians, Andamanese, Papuans and Aboriginal Australians than in Europeans and East Asians.
    Figure 2
  3. Model of gene flow in Asia.
    Figure 3
right

Accession codes



Primary accessions

European Nucleotide Archive

References



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Author information



  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

    • Mayukh Mondal, 
    • Ferran Casals & 
    • Tina Xu

  2. These authors jointly directed this work.

    • Qibin Li, 
    • Partha P Majumder & 
    • Jaume Bertranpetit

Affiliations

  1. Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (UPF-CSIC), Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.

    • Mayukh Mondal,
      •  
    • Marc Pybus,
      •  
    • David Comas,
      •  
    • Hafid Laayouni &
      •  
    • Jaume Bertranpetit

  2. Servei de Genòmica, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.

    • Ferran Casals

  3. BGI Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China.

    • Tina Xu &
      •  
    • Qibin Li

  4. Computational Biology, Target Sciences, GSK R&D, GlaxoSmithKline, Stevenage, UK.

    • Giovanni M Dall'Olio

  5. Department of Internal Medicine, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

    • Mihai G Netea

  6. Departament de Genètica i de Microbiologia, Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain.

    • Hafid Laayouni

  7. National Institute of BioMedical Genomics, Kalyani, India.

    • Partha P Majumder

  8. Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.

    • Jaume Bertranpetit

Contributions

M.M., F.C., P.P.M. and J.B. conceived and designed the project. P.P.M. provided the samples. P.P.M., T.X. and Q.L. sequenced samples and carried out initial analyses. M.M. performed the remaining genetic data analyses. F.C., G.M.D., M.P., M.G.N., D.C., H.L., P.P.M. and J.B. participated in and discussed analyses. M.M., F.C., P.P.M. and J.B. wrote the manuscript.

Competing financial interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to: 

Supplementary information


Article tools

To shed light on the peopling of South Asia and the origins of the morphological adaptations found there, we analyzed whole-genome sequences from 10 Andamanese individuals and compared them with sequences for 60 individuals from mainland Indian populations with different ethnic histories and with publicly available data from other populations. We show that all Asian and Pacific populations share a single origin and expansion out of Africa, contradicting an earlier proposal of two independent waves of migration1, 2, 3, 4. We also show that populations from South and Southeast Asia harbor a small proportion of ancestry from an unknown extinct hominin, and this ancestry is absent from Europeans and East Asians. The footprints of adaptive selection in the genomes of the Andamanese show that the characteristic distinctive phenotypes of this population (including very short stature) do not reflect an ancient African origin but instead result from strong natural selection on genes related to human body size.

Subject terms:

At a glance

Figures

First | 1-3 of 3 | Last
left
  1. Ancestry of Indian populations.Figure 1
  2. Fewer African-derived alleles in Indians, Andamanese, Papuans and Aboriginal Australians than in Europeans and East Asians.Figure 2
  3. Model of gene flow in Asia.Figure 3
right
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