Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

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The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is a research institute for evolutionary anthropology based in Leipzig, Germany founded in 1997. It is part of the Max Planck Institute network. The Institute currently employs three-hundred and thirty-four people.

[edit] Neanderthal genome

In July 2006, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and 454 Life Sciences announced that they would be sequencing the Neandertal genome over the next two years. At three billion base pairs, the Neandertal genome is roughly the size of the human genome and likely shares many identical genes. It is thought that a comparison of the Neandertal genome and human genome will expand understanding of Neanderthals as well as the evolution of humans and human brains.^[1]

DNA researcher Svante Pääbo has tested more than 70 Neandertal specimens and found only one that had enough DNA to sample. Preliminary DNA sequencing from a 38,000 year old bone fragment of a femur bone found at a Croatian Vindija Cave in 1980 shows that Neanderthalis and Homo sapiens share about 99.5% of their DNA. It is believed that the two species shared a common ancestor about 500,000 years ago. Nature has calculated the species diverged about 516,000 years ago, whereas fossil records show a time of about 400,000 years ago. From DNA records, scientists hope to falsify or confirm the theory that there was interbreeding between the species.^[2]