Only 7% of DNA is unique to modern humans

What makes human beings unique? Scientists have taken another step, with a new tool that can more accurately compare the DNA of modern humans and our extinct ancestors, thus solving a long-lasting mystery

According to a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances, only 7% of our genome is not shared with other humans (early ancestors)

"This is a small percentage," said Nathan Schaefer, a computational biologist at the University of California and co-author of the new paper

This study used DNA extracted from the fossil remains of the now extinct Neanderthals and Denisovans.

This is a difficult problem to count, and researchers "developed a valuable tool to consider missing data in paleogenomes," said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin

The researchers also discovered that a small part of our genome-only 1.

"We can tell us that those genomic regions are highly enriched in genes related to neurodevelopment and brain function," said Richard Green, one of the authors of the paper and a computational biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz

In 2010, Green helped produce the first sketch of the Neanderthal genome

"Better tools allow us to ask more and more detailed questions about human history and evolution," said Akey, who is now in Princeton and is not involved in this new research

However, Alan Templeton, a population geneticist at Washington University in St.

The new findings emphasize that "we are actually a very young species," Akey said

An ancestral recombination graph of human, Neanderthal, and Denisovan genomes