The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and 454 Life Sciences Corporation have completed a draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome

The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, Germany, and the 454 Life Sciences Corporation, in Branford, Connecticut, will announce on 12 February during the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and at a simultaneous European press briefing that they have completed a first draft version of the Neanderthal genome. The project, made possible by financing from the Max Planck Society, is directed by Prof. Svante Pääbo, Director of the Institute’s Department of Evolutionary Anthropology. Pääbo and his colleagues have sequenced more than one billion DNA fragments extracted from three Croatian Neanderthal fossils, using novel methods developed for this project. The Neanderthal genome sequence will clarify the evolutionary relationship between humans and Neanderthals as well as help identify those genetic changes that enabled modern humans to leave Africa and rapidly spread around the world, starting around 100,000 years ago.