Скрещивались ли неандертальцы массово с кроманьонцами? (С палеодилетантской точки зрения, но с учетом данных полногеномного секвенирования образцов современной и древней ДНК, а также на основе знаний используемых для этого технологий)

Abstract

Neanderthals lived on the territory of present-day Western Europe for about 300 thousand years before the arrival of people of modern anatomical type, also called Cro-Magnons, about 50 thousand years ago. After that Neanderthal soon disappeared and what happened to them occupies the minds of many generations of paleoanthropologists, and over the years a large number of different versions have been put forward, according to one of which there was assimilation of Neanderthals by Cro-Magnons, which in fact does not correspond to reality. To the question whether interbreeding of these ancient hominins took place, one can confidently say only one thing – Neanderthal women did not contribute to the populations of modern humans, as can be seen from the differences in the nucleotide DNA sequences of inherited matrilineal mitochondrial genomes in Neanderthals and modern humans. The presence of some allelic variants of individual Neanderthal genes in the form of a number of single-nucleotide substitutions in the genomes of modern humans, detected by full-genome sequencing of nuclear DNA is still necessary an additional verification, which requires sequencing a larger number of complete genomes of ancient hominins with a large coverage. At the same time, the samples of modern genomes for such an analysis should be thoroughly increased, since only now about 8 billion very different modern unique "genomes" “live” on the Planet, and at least 100 million Neanderthals lived for all the years, also carrying unique genomes, although their polymorphism was somewhat lower. The article focuses on the fact that only diploid variant of genome, which can be designated as 6.0, should be considered a complete genome for human, whereas all currently sequenced genomes of ancient people are essentially quasi-haploid and can be designated as 3.0, based on the numbers of billions of pairs of nitrogenous bases in both double and single a set of chromosomes, respectively. Accordingly, the coverage during genome sequencing should be recalculated for their diploid status but not only for ancient organisms. It is also noted that the sequencing of ancient DNA urgently requires the development of new monomolecular sequencing methods, albeit characterized by lower productivity (speed), but independent of any stage of amplification and any enzymatic treatments, which will allow to establish the sequence of nucleotides as it is, including the recognition of uracils and other modifications of nitrogenous bases, as well as the absence of these in the DNA chains, which will certainly increase the accuracy of this process.