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Since the first Neanderthal genome was sequenced in 2010, research has shown that people of Eurasian descent carry approximately 2% of Neanderthal DNA, inherited through interbreeding between the two species during Homo sapiens’ migration into Eurasia around 45,000 years ago.
This groundbreaking discovery, which earned Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, the 2022 Nobel Prize in Medicine, subsequently sparked numerous questions. Researchers have been investigating why certain regions of modern genomes resulting from this interbreeding lack Neanderthal sequences, particularly on the X chromosome. The question of why certain genes were inherited from Homo neanderthalensis and not others also remains. Most significantly, scientists are working to understand how sexual reproduction occurred between individuals of the two species and the demographic context in which it took place.
