Ghost DNA : [West Africans have DNA unrelated to a known human ancestor]

Using a new method, the researchers found a mysterious "ghost" of DNA among the Yoruba population of West Africa. Before homo sapiens was the only human species that walked the land, there were other protohuman species. Despite the fact that several studies have found DNA from ancient fouled in modern humans, Neanderthals and mainly the Denovetians lack DNA from historic African hominids and contemporary humans. This is because we have not had the opportunity to access the archaic genomes of the Africa peoples.

But research published in the University of California Los Angeles bioRxiv, which is waiting for peer review, new interesting findings on the subject.

In research, Arun Sriram Sankararaman Durvasula and the Department of Human Genetics at UCLA presented a statistical method that combines the genetics of different populations to identify rare genetic codes today's archaic offspring of individuals.

Using this new method, the researchers applied the DNA of 50 randomly selected people from the European population and the modern DNA of 50 individuals from the African population of Yoruba whose genomes were sequenced in the 1000 genome project.

According to their results, there is DNA from an unknown species of ancient hominids in about eight percent of the genetic ancestors of the Yoruba population in West Africa. Because this DNA has not yet been linked to a known ancient population, it is called a "ghost" species.

The question now is: who owns this "ghost" DNA?

One hypothesis is that this DNA comes from a species known as homo heidelbergensis. There is evidence to suggest that this advanced population of hominids lived in Africa more than 200,000 years ago. However, DNA may also belong to a population of hominids whose existence has not yet been recognized.

There is less of the archaic mysterious ancestry that is found in the Yoruba population in selectively restricted regions of the genome. This discovery suggests that the newly discovered mixture has undergone the same type of filtration process as previous Neanderthal and Denisovan mixtures, resulting in the elimination of non-beneficial traits.

On the other hand, several results have shown that the archaic DNA sequence of this population is high in some regions. This might indicate not only typically the impact with this archaic GENETICS on modern Yoruba fouled, but also give a good idea of how modern-day humans have evolved in general as a species.