![]() ![]() sapiens was the only one to have the full set,” says Condemi. The first surprise was discovering that the full variability of the ABO system seen in modern humans was present in the Neanderthals. The Denisovan genome came from a female who lived in Denisova Cave about 64,000 years ago. A third female aged about 57,000 years came from Vindija Cave in Croatia. The Neanderthals included two Siberians: the 100,000 year old Altai female who lived in Denisova Cave, and a 48,000 year female who resided in Chagyrskaya Cave. The authors took advantage of open access to drill down into the high-quality genomes of three Neanderthals and a Denisovan – for some reason all of them female. If these seven match up the transfusion will be successful. They consist of ABO, Rhesus (Rh), Kell, Duffy, Kidd, MNS and Diego. Blood groups represent collections of tags – think of them like different-coloured ‘post its’ – that are carried on the surface of red blood cells. They focused on the seven major blood groups that are used today to match donors and recipients. ![]() The Marseille coffee club decided to redress that gap. But the genes for their blood types seem to have been neglected. They can study the genes for hair and eye colour, for their immune systems and disease vulnerabilities. Today researchers have the complete genomes of at least 18 Neanderthals (only four with high ‘coverage’ – which refers to the number of times each nucleotide has been sequenced) and one Denisovan to pore over. But since the 1970s stretches of DNA code have replaced blood types as the preeminent tracking tool. For instance in 1953 the origin of Native Americans was traced to Siberia based on the newly identified Diego blood group. “That might explain why Neanderthal-human inbreeding was limited,” says paleoanthropologist and lead author Silvana Condemi.īlood types used to be the number one tool for tracing the story of human origins and migration. Because of the mismatched Rh types, there’s a one-in-five chance of producing a baby with haemolytic disease. For one thing, transfusing a Neanderthal with human blood would be a bad idea. Today they report their surprising results in PLOS 1. A paleoanthropologist, a geneticist and a blood specialist were hanging around an espresso machine – and one of them wondered: how would you give a Neanderthal a blood transfusion?īy the time they’d finished their short blacks and lattes, the researchers from the mixed lab at Aix-Marseille Université in France realised it was no joke: between them they had the tools to answer the question. ![]()
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