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Publications (34)
Modern humans appeared in Europe by at least 45,000 years ago1–5, but the extent of their interactions with Neanderthals, who disappeared by about 40,000 years ago6, and their relationship to the broader expansion of modern humans outside Africa are poorly understood. Here we present genome-wide data from three individuals dated to between 45,930 a...
To be able to deal with uncertainty is of primary importance to most living organisms.When cues provide information about the state of the environment, organisms can use them to respond flexibly.Life forms have evolved complex adaptations and sensory mechanisms to use these environmental cues and extract valuable information about the environment.P...
Common wheat (Triticum aestivum L., BBAADD) is a major staple food crop worldwide. The diploid progenitors of the A- and D-subgenomes have been unequivocally identified, that of B however remains ambiguous and controversial but is suspected to be related to species of Aegilops, section Sitopsis. Here, we report the assembly of chromosome-level geno...
Wild progenitors of major crops can help us understand domestication, and may also provide the genetic resources needed for ensuring food security in the face of climate change. We examined the genetic structure of a wild emmer wheat population, sampled over 36 years while both temperature and CO2 concentration increased significantly. The genotype...
Glucocorticoids, such as cortisol, mediate homeostatic processes, allowing individuals to adjust to fluctuating environments. The regulation of circadian cortisol responses, a key homeostatic function, has been shown to be heritable. However, to understand better the role of parental care in shaping physiological functioning in long-lived mammals w...
Bread wheat ( Triticum aestivum L., BBAADD) is a major staple food crop worldwide. The diploid progenitors of the A- and D-subgenomes have been unequivocally identified, that of B however remains ambiguous and controversial but is suspected to be related to species of Aegilops , section Sitopsis . Here, we report the assembly of chromosome-level ge...
In this paper, we critically discuss existing cognitive science accounts of the evolution of human mind, such as evolutionary psychology, cultural evolutionary psychology and coevolutionary accounts.
We introduce cognitive twists to refer to mechanisms that evolved through the coevolution of genes and culture, and that are acquired through domain-g...
Bones and teeth are important sources of Pleistocene hominin DNA, but are rarely recovered at archaeological sites. Mitochondrial DNA has been retrieved from cave sediments, but provides limited value for studying population relationships. We therefore developed methods for the enrichment and analysis of nuclear DNA from sediments, and applied them...
The neuropeptide S (NPS) system plays an important role in fear and fear memory processing but has also been associated with allergic and inflammatory diseases. Genes for NPS and its receptor NPSR1 are found in all tetrapods. Compared to non-human primates, several non-synonymous single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) occur in both human genes that...
SARS-CoV-2 epidemics quickly propagated worldwide, sorting virus genomic variants in newly established propagules of infections. Stochasticity in transmission within and between countries or an actual selective advantage could explain the global high frequency reached by some genomic variants. Using statistical analyses, demographic reconstructions...
We sequenced the genome of a Neandertal from Chagyrskaya Cave in the Altai Mountains, Russia, to 27-fold genomic coverage. We show that this Neandertal was a female and that she was more related to Neandertals in western Eurasia [Prüfer et al., Science 358, 655–658 (2017); Hajdinjak et al., Nature 555, 652–656 (2018)] than to Neandertals who lived...
Human evolutionary history is rich with the interbreeding of divergent populations. Most humans outside of Africa trace about 2% of their genomes to admixture from Neanderthals, which occurred 50–60 thousand years ago¹. Here we examine the effect of this event using 14.4 million putative archaic chromosome fragments that were detected in fully phas...
Starting in Wuhan, China, SARS-CoV-2 epidemics quickly propagated worldwide in less than three months, geographically sorting genomic variants in newly established propagules of infections. Stochasticity in transmission within and between countries and/or actual advantage in virus transmissibility could explain the high frequency reached by some ge...
To be able to deal with uncertainty is of primary importance to all organisms. When cues provide information about the state of the environment, organisms can use them to respond flexibly. Thus information can provide fitness advantages. Without environmental cues, an organism can reduce the risks of environmental uncertainty by hedging its bets ac...
We sequenced the genome of a Neandertal from Chagyrskaya Cave in the Altai Mountains, Russia, to 27-fold genomic coverage. We estimate that this individual lived ~80,000 years ago and was more closely related to Neandertals in western Eurasia than to Neandertals who lived earlier in Denisova Cave, which is located about 100 km away. About 12.9% of...
Studies of Native South American genetic diversity have helped to shed light on the peopling and differentiation of the continent, but available data are sparse for the major ecogeographic domains. These include the Pacific Coast, a potential early migration route; the Andes, home to the most expansive complex societies and to one of the most widel...
The Forbes’ Quarry and Devil’s Tower partial crania from Gibraltar are among the first Neanderthal remains ever found. Here, we show that small amounts of ancient DNA are preserved in the petrous bones of the 2 individuals despite unfavorable climatic conditions. However, the endogenous Neanderthal DNA is present among an overwhelming excess of rec...
Little is known about the population history of Neandertals over the hundreds of thousands of years of their existence. We retrieved nuclear genomic sequences from two Neandertals, one from Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave in Germany and the other from Scladina Cave in Belgium, who lived around 120,000 years ago. Despite the deeply divergent mitochondrial l...
Contagious yawning, emotional contagion and empathy are characterized by the activation of similar neurophysiological states or responses in an observed individual and an observer. For example, it is hard to keep one’s mouth closed when imagining someone yawning, or not feeling distressed while observing other individuals perceiving pain. The evolu...
Bayesian modelling of chronometric, stratigraphic and genetic data from Denisova Cave provides a chronological framework for understanding Neanderthal and Denisovan presence at the site, as well as interactions between these groups.
The presence of Neanderthal DNA fragments in the genomes of modern humans from Europe and East Asia indicates multiple episodes of interbreeding between Neanderthals and the ancestors of both populations.
It is often unavoidable to combine data from different sequencing centers or sequencing platforms when compiling datasets with a large number of individuals. However, the different data are likely to contain specific systematic errors that will appear as SNPs. Here, we devise a method to detect systematic errors in combined datasets. To measure qua...
Neanderthals and Denisovans are extinct groups of hominins that separated from each other more than 390,000 years ago1,2. Here we present the genome of 'Denisova 11', a bone fragment from Denisova Cave (Russia)3 and show that it comes from an individual who had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. The father, whose genome bears traces of Ne...
It is often unavoidable to combine data from different sequencing centers or sequencing platforms when compiling datasets with a large number of individuals. However, the different data are likely to contain specific systematic errors that will appear as SNPs. Here, we devise a method to detect systematic errors in combined datasets. To measure qua...
Although it has previously been shown that Neanderthals contributed DNA to modern humans, not much is known about the genetic diversity of Neanderthals or the relationship between late Neanderthal populations at the time at which their last interactions with early modern humans occurred and before they eventually disappeared. Our ability to retriev...
To date the only Neandertal genome that has been sequenced to high quality is from an individual found in Southern Siberia. We sequenced the genome of a female Neandertal from ~50 thousand years ago from Vindija Cave, Croatia to ~30-fold genomic coverage. She carried 1.6 differences per ten thousand base pairs between the two copies of her genome,...
Although a rich record of Pleistocene human-associated archaeological assemblages exists, the scarcity of hominin fossils often impedes the understanding of which hominins occupied a site. Using targeted enrichment of mitochondrial DNA we show that cave sediments represent a rich source of ancient mammalian DNA that often includes traces of hominin...
In finite populations, an allele disappears or reaches fixation due to two main forces, selection and drift. Selection is generally thought to accelerate the process: a selected mutation will reach fixation faster than a neutral one, and a disadvantageous one will quickly disappear from the population. We show that even in simple diploid population...
In finite populations, an allele disappears or reaches fixation due to two main forces, selection and drift. Selection is generally thought to accelerate the process: a selected mutation will reach fixation faster than a neutral one, and a disadvantageous one will quickly disappear from the population. We show that even in simple diploid population...
Anoxia induces several heat shock proteins, and a mild heat pretreatment can acclimatize Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) seedlings to subsequent anoxic treatment. In this study, we analyzed the response of Arabidopsis seedlings to anoxia, heat, and combined heat + anoxia stress. A significant overlap between the anoxic and the heat responses was...
