Inconsistencies in Neanderthal Genomic DNA Sequences

Two recently published papers describe nuclear DNA sequences that were obtained from the same Neanderthal fossil. Our reanalyses of the data from these studies show that they are not consistent with each other and point to serious problems with the data quality in one of the studies, possibly due to modern human DNA contaminants and/or a high rate of sequencing errors.

[1]  E. Pennisi.  No Sex Please, We're Neandertals , 2007, Science.

[2]  Feng Chen,et al.  Sequencing and Analysis of Neanderthal Genomic DNA , 2006, Science.

[3]  Adrian W. Briggs,et al.  Analysis of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA , 2006, Nature.

[4]  R. Hudson,et al.  Interrogating multiple aspects of variation in a full resequencing data set to infer human population size changes. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[5]  Edward M. Rubin,et al.  Genomic Sequencing of Pleistocene Cave Bears , 2005, Science.

[6]  Geoffrey B. Nilsen,et al.  Whole-Genome Patterns of Common DNA Variation in Three Human Populations , 2005, Science.

[7]  M. Olivier.  A haplotype map of the human genome. , 2003, Nature.

[8]  M. Olivier.  A haplotype map of the human genome , 2003, Nature.

[9]  S. Pääbo,et al.  No Evidence of Neandertal mtDNA Contribution to Early Modern Humans , 2004, PLoS biology.

[10]  Mark George Thomas,et al.  Human Evolutionary Genetics , 2014, The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.

[11]  A. von Haeseler,et al.  DNA sequences from multiple amplifications reveal artifacts induced by cytosine deamination in ancient DNA. , 2001, Nucleic acids research.

[12]  M. Nordborg.  On the probability of Neanderthal ancestry. , 1998, American journal of human genetics.

[13]  R. Foley,et al.  Towards a theory of modern human origins: geography, demography, and diversity in recent human evolution. , 1998, American journal of physical anthropology.