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Review
. 2025 Feb:90:102280.
doi: 10.1016/j.gde.2024.102280. Epub 2024 Nov 21.

Archaic hominin admixture and its consequences for modern humans

Debashree Tagore  1 , Joshua M Akey  2
Affiliations
Review

Archaic hominin admixture and its consequences for modern humans

Debashree Tagore et al. Curr Opin Genet Dev. 2025 Feb.

Abstract

As anatomically modern humans dispersed out of Africa, they encountered and mated with now extinct hominins, including Neanderthals and Denisovans. It is now well established that all non-African individuals derive approximately 2% of their genome from Neanderthal ancestors and individuals of Melanesian and Australian aboriginal ancestry inherited an additional 2%-5% of their genomes from Denisovan ancestors. Attention has started to shift from documenting amounts of archaic admixture and identifying introgressed segments to understanding their molecular, phenotypic, and evolutionary consequences and refining models of human history. Here, we review recent insights into admixture between modern and archaic humans, emphasizing methodological innovations and the functional and phenotypic effects Neanderthal and Denisovan sequences have in contemporary individuals.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest Joshua Akey reports financial support was provided by National Institute of General Medical Sciences. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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