Scientists in Germany draft the Neanderthal genome

NEW YORK - Scientists report that they have reconstructed the genome of Neanderthals, a human species that was driven to extinction some 30,000 years ago, probably by the first modern humans to enter Europe. The Neanderthal genome, when fully analyzed, is expected to shed light on many critical aspects of human evolution.

It will help document two important sets of genetic changes: those that occurred between the human line's split from chimpanzees, some 5.7 million years ago, and the split between Neanderthals and humans 300,000 years ago; and second, the changes in the human line after it diverged from Neanderthals.

An early inference that can be drawn from the new study is that there is no significant trace of Neanderthal genes in modern humans. This confounds speculation that modern humans could have interbred with Neanderthals, thus benefiting from the genes that adapted the Neanderthals to the cold climate that prevailed in Europe during last ice age, which ended 10,000 years ago.

Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, led a team that had to overcome a series of daunting technical obstacles to produce the draft of the Neanderthal genome.

Paabo began his project more than 10 years ago, when he extracted the first verifiable piece of Neanderthal DNA.

Many had tried to do so but failed.