Leonardo Iasi

Neanderthals and early humans may have interbred over a vast area We are getting a clearer sense of where and how often Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred, and it turns out the behaviour was much more common than we first thought

We have long known that early humans and Neanderthals interbred, but where did it happen and over what kind of time period? My latest for @newscientist.com reports on a new paper that finds it may have happened over a massive area 🧪

www.newscientist.com/article/2513...

📢 We're hiring a postdoc (33 months) in human evolutionary genomics / paleogenomics / statistical genetics, Paris 🇫🇷
Project on selection on disease-associated variants, integrating ancient genomes, GWAS, and Ancestral Rec. Graphs.
Start May 2026 (flexible).
Apply here: emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...

An early East Asian lineage with unexpectedly low Denisovan ancestry Yang et al. study Denisovan ancestry in ancient and present-day humans. In contrast to other East Asians, genomic comparisons suggest that the Jomon derived most of their ancestry from a deep lineage ...

In a new paper led by Jiaqi Yang we trace the distribution of Denisovan introgressed DNA in ancient modern human genomes over time.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

An early East Asian lineage with unexpectedly low Denisovan ancestry Yang et al. study Denisovan ancestry in ancient and present-day humans. In contrast to other East Asians, genomic comparisons suggest that the Jomon derived most of their ancestry from a deep lineage…

If you need more exciting news about Denisovans, check out our paper on Denisovan ancestry in modern humans through time, out today in Current Biology: www.cell.com/current-biol...! #Denisovan #ancientDNA

Happy to share a PhD opportunity in my new lab at the University of Zurich! Application deadline: June 30. Do not hesitate to contact me for any questions!

Check out our dive into 50,000 years of Indian genetic history!🇮🇳
🧬~2,700 genomes
🦴Neanderthal/Denisovan DNA
🌾Hunter-gatherer, Iranian farmer & Steppe ancestry
🩺Health-linked, population-specific variants

@lauritsskov.bsky.social & Priya Moorjani
#Genomics #India #HumanEvolution #PopulationGenetics

Neandertal ancestry through time: Insights from genomes of ancient and present-day humans Gene flow from Neandertals has shaped the genetic and phenotypic variation in modern humans. We generate a catalog of Neandertal ancestry segments in more than 300 genomes spanning the last 50,000 yea...

Excited to share our manuscript version of our publication on NIHMS: “Neandertal ancestry through time: Insights from genomes of ancient and present-day humans” published in @science.org‬. Here for everyone to read: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Very excited to be part of two manuscripts which are now on biorxiv!
arxiv.org/pdf/2504.15156
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Archaic humans such as Neanderthals and Denisovans are extinct but their DNA lives on in many humans today because our ancestors met and had children with them.

We ( @zeniabaek.bsky.social @moicoll.bsky.social and @asgerhobolth.bsky.social ) present a new cool way to visualize the optimal trade off for hmm decoding called Artemis plots!
arxiv.org/pdf/2504.15156
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Neanderthal ancestry through time: Insights from genomes of ancient and present-day humans Gene flow from Neanderthals has shaped genetic and phenotypic variation in modern humans. We generated a catalog of Neanderthal ancestry segments in more than 300 genomes spanning the past 50,000 year...

and here
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Earliest modern human genomes constrain timing of Neanderthal admixture - Nature High-coverage and low-coverage genomic data for some of the earliest modern humans in Europe provide insights into recent admixture with Neanderthals and familial relationship links with distant commu...

Original papers can be found here:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Does Neanderthal DNA put a ceiling on Out of Africa? YouTube video by Stefan Milo

Check out this great video from @stefanmilo.bsky.social discussing recent finding on the date of Neanderthal introgression and what one might learn from this about the human migration out of Africa (feat. @arevsumer.bsky.social and me).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXN-...

Out in @science.org of course

Co-first author Manjusha Chintalapati is also on bluesky @mchintalapati.bsky.social

together with @lauritsskov.bsky.social, @matejahajdi.bsky.social and Alba Bossoms Mesa.

This study was a collaboration between MPI for evolutionary anthropology and @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social , under the supervision of @moorjanipriya.bsky.social and @benmpeter.bsky.social, with co-first author Manjusha Chintalapati

Excitingly, Suemer et al. published in Nature today, also shows similar estimates for the timing of the Neanderthal gene flow. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We examined the distribution of Neandertal ancestry over time and found that the landscape of Neandertal ancestry, the deserts and high frequency regions, formed quickly after the gene flow supporting theoretical predictions.

Our data supports a single extended pulse of Neandertal gene flow that took place around 47,000 years ago, with a duration of around 7,000 years.

Digging deeper, we infer the timing of Neandertal gene flow per individual by studying the ancestry covariance across the genome.

Interestingly, the Early out of Africa individuals including Oase1, Ust’ Ishim and the Bacho Kiros have the highest unique Neandertal ancestry and significantly different matching profile to sequenced Neandertals than later modern humans- a possible indication of diversified gene flow.

By exploring the colocalization of Neandertal ancestry segments and contrasting it to genome-wide allele sharing, we uncovered that most (>90%) Neandertal ancestry is shared among individuals and follows the overall population structure.

We use genomic data from 59 ancient modern human individuals ranging between 45,000–2,200 yBP with 275 diverse present-day individuals from worldwide populations forming 16 clusters for our analysis.

Previous studies characterized the Neandertal ancestry segments in present-day individuals and found a non-homogeneous distribution. But how did this distribution look in the past?

Our research identifies a single major Neandertal gene flow event which occurred ~47,000 years ago, lasting about 6,800 years, which significantly impacted genetic diversity in non-African ancestors.

Neanderthal ancestry through time: Insights from genomes of ancient and present-day humans Gene flow from Neanderthals has shaped genetic and phenotypic variation in modern humans. We generated a catalog of Neanderthal ancestry segments in more than 300 genomes spanning the past 50,000 year...

Out today in @sciencemagazine, we've journeyed into our shared history with Neandertals by analyzing over 300 present-day and ancient modern humans, including 59 individuals who lived between 2,000 and 45,000 years ago.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...