Neanderthal Genes Continue to Impact Modern Humans.

A team of researchers led by Cornell University has developed computational genetic tools to clarify the genetic traces of interbreeding between humans of non-African ancestry and Neanderthals that occurred about 50,000 years ago. Although some Neanderthal genes are responsible for certain traits in modern humans, modern human genes seem to be winning out over successive generations. The groundbreaking computational models developed could be used to gain evolutionary insights from other large and more diverse databases to better understand archaic humans’ genetic influences on present-day humans.