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As a layperson I find these Neanderthal DNA numbers to be rather confusing. I'm confident the following is wrong somehow, and I'd love to hear why: I've read n
by marcusverus 3y ago
As a layperson I find these Neanderthal DNA numbers to be rather confusing. I'm confident the following is wrong somehow, and I'd love to hear why:
I've read numerous times that the average European's DNA is ~2% Neanderthal, but I've also read that the difference between the human genome and the chimp genome is only 1-4%. So, that ~4% of DNA is 'human DNA', while the rest is basically hominid boilerplate. Neanderthals were presumably similar--~95% boilerplate hominid DNA and 5% 'Neanderthal DNA'.
So, if only 4% of my DNA is 'Human DNA', and 2% of that is 'Neanderthal DNA'... wouldn't that make me half human, half Neanderthal? (i.e. 96% boilerplate, 2% human, 2% Neanderthal). My assumption here is that the 5% 'human DNA' and the 5% 'Neanderthal DNA' overlap, and so any 'Neanderthal DNA' in my genome replaced 'human DNA' as opposed to boilerplate DNA, which might be wrong, but even with zero overlap, wouldn't that make me at least one third Neanderthal, two-thirds human? (i.e. 94% boilerplate, 4% human, 2% Neanderthal)
- someotherperson 3y agoNB: I'm not a scientist, so could be wrong. The 2% here isn't the full thing, it's of the "highly variable genes." So if the "boilerplate" is 90% (for example) then the 2% mentioned is of that final 10%, or 0.2% of the total. I used 90% as a simpler example, but the reality is the "boilerplate" between Neanderthals and modern humans here is closer to 98-99%, which puts that 2% at around 0.0004% to 0.0002% of the total genome.
- evandijk70 3y agoI guess it's similar to the numbers you get for heritage; eg. you might genetically be 50% Caucasian and 50% Asian. This does not mean that Asians and Caucasians have completely different DNA