The Neandersals
The genome sequencing of mouse, human, dog, rhesus macaque monkey, chimpanze have been fiished, and now mitochondria Neaderthals from 30000 years ago. The dream in Jurassic Park may come true soon…
"A complete mitochondrial (mt) genome sequence was reconstructed from a 38,000 year-old Neandertal individual with 8341 mtDNA sequences identified among 4.8 Gb of DNA generated from 
0.3 g of bone. Analysis of the assembled sequence unequivocally establishes that the Neandertal mtDNA falls outside the variation of extant human mtDNAs, and allows an estimate of the divergence date between the two mtDNA lineages of 660,000 ± 140,000 years. Of the 13 proteins encoded in the mtDNA, subunit 2 of cytochrome c oxidase of the mitochondrial electron transport chain has experienced the largest number of amino acid substitutions in human ancestors since the separation from Neandertals. There is evidence that purifying selection in the Neandertal mtDNA was reduced compared with other primate lineages, suggesting that the effective population size of Neandertals was small. " (Cell 2008, 134, 426.)
Neanderthals have been studied for many years, but there are many breakthroughs last year, which was turned into a feature article in National Geography. VV was fasinated by this story, and became to realize how mean we human are. Old stories, new stories, why people like stories? Archiologists build old stories about past, biologists build new stories about livings and diseases, novelists and artists build stories about life of past, now and future. So what’s the purpose of the stories? Curiosity? Entertainments? Selfish gene? Matrix order? or the destiny of human: what? when? where? who? why? how?
