dark matter
In the final episode of Dark Matter, Jose Manuel Neves talks about a genetic change that could have given modern humans a decisive advantage over their contemporaries.
A single amino acid change in a single protein, TKTL1, could have given modern humans a decisive advantage over their contemporaries, Neanderthals, by allowing a greater number of neurons to form in the neocortex. This is the extraordinary conclusion reached by a large international team of researchers led by Anneline Pinson of The Max Planck Institute Molecular cell biology and genetics, in which they collaborated, among other things, Svante Paäbo, who in 2010, together with his team, succeeded in sequencing the genome for the first time Neanderthals.
According to researchers, this little genetic change It decisively contributed to the cognitive differences between early humans of our species and other human variants that ended up becoming extinct. The study was published today in the journal Science.
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