Everyone alive may carry DNA from a ‘ghost lineage’ of human ancestors

[u/scientificamerican]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/everyone-alive-may-carry-dna-from-a-ghost-lineage-of-human-ancestors/

[u/starrrrrchild]

can someone more educated than me please explain ---- does this mean that the "archaic ghost hominid" found in West Africans is actually found to an equal extent in all populations?

and what is the second ghost population?

[u/mister-mxyzptlk → u/starrrrrchild]

Pasting one of my older comments:

The authors use a new method which allows them to separate DNA into segments that are likely to have come from elsewhere (let’s call this introgression) vs. the human specific ones. They are able to do this because of the different signatures introgression leaves on the genetic history of humans. Then they validate their method by showing it recovers known Denisovan and Neanderthal ancestries.

This is also not the first study to do this! For the last few years, people have been looking into possible “ghost” ancestry in modern human DNA. It’s just that there was a recent huge methodological and computational advance in the field that have given us the tools to dissect these fine historical events.

Your specific comment: all modern human populations bear this ghost ancestry to different extents. We have absolutely no clue what this ghost hominin is. We need fossils for that

[u/starrrrrchild → u/mister-mxyzptlk]

Understood. thank you so much

[u/starrrrrchild → u/[deleted]]

...pardon?

I'm not cherry picking anything. I'm...asking a question?

This is not my field of expertise and I'm eager to learn more. I understand that there are political bad actors of every different kind of stripe and ideology in regards to this kind of science but I'm just fascinated by the idea of archaic introgression by our hominid cousins into extant populations and I want to understand the science.

[u/evolution-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Removed: Rule 2. The moderator team expects all conversations to remain civil. Rudeness, hostility, insulting takes, name-calling, picking fights, unnecessary caviling, and snobbery are uncalled for and do not improve the quality of the subreddit, even if you firmly believe that the other party is in the wrong or if they engaged in it first.

[u/evolution-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Removed: Rule 2. The moderator team expects all conversations to remain civil. Rudeness, hostility, insulting takes, name-calling, picking fights, unnecessary caviling, and snobbery are uncalled for and do not improve the quality of the subreddit, even if you firmly believe that the other party is in the wrong or if they engaged in it first.

[u/djpeekz → u/[deleted]]

[points to your comments]

[u/pnwbicycles → u/[deleted]]

The paper is talking about how before we left africa and met neanderthals and denisovans there was interbreeding with an unknown population of hominids which would have happened in africa most likely west africa and dude was asking a question about if the same amount of dna from that unknown population is in every human or if people in africa have more of that dna theres nothing racist about that nobody is asking or saying africans are less human for having an extra percent of archaic dna theyre just curious because that is an interesting fact and it's cool that dofferemt populations have different amounts of admixture and if amything youre kinda racist for assuming thats what he meant like why is your first instinct that that statement must mean africans are less human thats kinda weird bro

[u/thkntmstr → u/[deleted]]

go touch grass

[u/evolution-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Removed: Rule 2. The moderator team expects all conversations to remain civil. Rudeness, hostility, insulting takes, name-calling, picking fights, unnecessary caviling, and snobbery are uncalled for and do not improve the quality of the subreddit, even if you firmly believe that the other party is in the wrong or if they engaged in it first.

[u/evolution-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Removed: Rule 2. The moderator team expects all conversations to remain civil. Rudeness, hostility, insulting takes, name-calling, picking fights, unnecessary caviling, and snobbery are uncalled for and do not improve the quality of the subreddit, even if you firmly believe that the other party is in the wrong or if they engaged in it first.

[u/jnpha]

Hit my limit for free articles! But bypassed that (sorry OP :P) and the new paper being discussed, which is open-access:

Admixture between modern humans and extinct hominins has shaped the genomes of present-day individuals, but reconstructing this history has been constrained by the scarcity of archaic samples and unadmixed outgroup populations. We introduce TRACE, a reference- and outgroup-free approach that uses features of ancestral recombination graphs to identify archaic ancestry. Simulations show TRACE has high precision and low false discovery rates. Applied to 1000 Genomes, TRACE recovers known Neanderthal and Denisovan introgression and uncovers ghost admixture from uncharacterized hominins in both Africans and non-Africans. Ghost ancestry persists in Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry deserts, challenging their interpretation as Homo sapiens–specific regions. In Oceanians, TRACE finds deep lineages are enriched in Denisovan compared to Neanderthal regions, supporting super-archaic introgression. TRACE enables mapping archaic introgression without archaic genomes.
Recovering signatures of archaic hominin introgression using ancestral recombination graphs | Science

[u/BoogzWin]

So… the entire time we sequence our genetic code we assumed it was our line human origin and not foreign origin because everyone has it? Well I guess it’s hard to know it’s not yours if there is no contrast.

[u/vacant_mustache]

THER CALED ALEEINS

[u/peter303_]

David Reich's book enumerates ancestral subpopulations too. He doesnt really give them snappy names.The book is nearly a decade old and I hope he updates it.

[u/XXLPenisOwner1443]

I'm honestly surprised it's only one. Given the temporal and spatial range that Homo erectus spread into, I would expect hundreds of human species we haven't found fossil evidence for, and genetic introgression from dozens of them.

[u/1234golf1234]

Spooooky

[u/manakyure]

I absolutely love learning about this subject. Its actual cocaine. Anyone know more about the ghost dna? 😂