Outstanding questions in the study of archaic hominin admixture.

Publication Year
2018

Type

Journal Article
Abstract

The complete sequencing of archaic and modern human genomes has revolutionized the study of human history and evolution. The application of paleogenomics has answered questions that were beyond the scope of archaeology alone-definitively proving admixture between archaic and modern humans. Despite the remarkable progress made in the study of archaic-modern human admixture, many outstanding questions remain. Here, we review some of these questions, which include how frequent archaic-modern human admixture was in history, to what degree drift and selection are responsible for the loss and retention of introgressed sequences in modern human genomes, and how surviving archaic sequences affect human phenotypes.

Journal
PLoS Genet
Volume
14
Issue
5
Pages
e1007349
Date Published
05/2018
ISSN Number
1553-7404
Alternate Journal
PLoS Genet.
PMCID
PMC5978786
PMID
29852022