Neanderthal genome project
Draft Neanderthal genome reveals evidence of interbreeding
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗Most of the draft came from 400 milligrams of powder drilled out of three Neanderthal bones — and in one sample, more than 95% of the DNA recovered belonged to bacteria.
A draft, announced 6 May 2010
The Max Planck Society announced on 6 May 2010 that an international team led by Svante Pääbo had produced an initial draft of the Neanderthal genome — the first genome sequence from an extinct human relative.
The draft covered more than 60% of the genome, about 4 billion base pairs, assembled from over a billion short and damaged DNA fragments. It was a draft, not a finished, gap-free sequence.
The peer-reviewed paper, by Richard E. Green and more than 50 co-authors, appeared in the 7 May issue of Science.
Four hundred milligrams of bone powder
The sequence incorporated DNA from Neanderthal remains found in Croatia, Germany, Spain and Russia. Most of the usable material came from three female individuals from Croatia's Vindija Cave — 400 milligrams of powder.
Contamination was the constant obstacle: in one sample, more than 95% of the recovered DNA belonged to bacteria and other microorganisms rather than to the Neanderthal.
Four years of ancient-DNA extraction, contamination control and high-throughput sequencing produced enough nuclear DNA to compare Neanderthals directly with living human genomes.
The nuclear data reversed the mitochondrial answer
Comparison with five present-day human genomes found Neanderthals slightly more closely related to people outside Africa than to Africans. The team read that systematic excess as evidence of gene flow between Neanderthals and early modern humans.
Earlier mitochondrial-DNA comparisons had detected no such admixture; this was a nuclear result, and it pointed the other way.
The much-quoted 1%–4% Neanderthal contribution was the paper's model-based estimate for many non-African populations, not a claim about every living person. This was also the Neanderthal Genome Project, not the Human Genome Project — which is what the corpus article filed under this date actually describes.
Sources
Researched 24 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited Date corrected
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →
Date corrected. The research places this at 2010-05-06.
What the sources leave uncertain
- The institutional announcement is dated 6 May 2010 and its embargo expired that evening; the Science issue and project page use 7 May. Thus 6 May is the best date for the announcement, while 7 May is the publication date.
- The 1%–4% estimate was the 2010 paper’s model-based estimate for many non-African populations, not a claim that every living person carries that exact proportion.