How Much Neanderthal Do You Have in You? Prove it!
Posted by Justin on December 18th, 2011
23 and Me, the genetics company offering to break down and explain customers DNA using only a spit sample is now allows you to check for another variable.
Exactly how much Neanderthal DNA do you have in you?
The lab, developed by one of our resident computational biologists, Eric Durand, compares two modern human genomes with the Neanderthal genome to determine the percentage of your own DNA is Neanderthal. Before coming to 23andMe, Eric worked on the first draft of the Neanderthal genome and on analysis of the Denisova genome, another of our early human cousins. The method we use to determine the percent of Neanderthal DNA a person has is similar to the one Eric helped develop while working at the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley.
The 23 and Me blog, cleverly titled The Spittoon, says that most people have some degree of Neanderthal DNA but a minority of the human population has much more.
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