SRGAP2 and the gradual evolution of the modern human language faculty

AbstractIn this paper we examine a new source of evidence that draws on data from archaic human genomes to support the hypothesis that vocal learning in Homo preceded the emergence of Anatomically Modern Humans. We build our claim on the evolutionary history of the SLITROBO GTPase 2 gene (SRGAP2). The SLIT-ROBO molecular pathway has been shown to have an important role in the context of vocal learning. Though the relevance of the SRGAP2 gene duplication in the emergence of some aspect of language has not gone completely unnoticed, recent results now allow us to articulate a mechanistic hypothesis of its role in the context of axon guidance. Specifically, SRGAP2C, a duplication of SRGAP2 crucially also found in Neanderthals and Denisovans, but not in extant mammals, inhibits the ancestral SRGAP2A, which in turn modulates the axon guidance function of the SLIT-ROBO molecular pathway. This, we claim, could have contributed to the establishment of the critical cortico-laryngeal connection of the vocal learning circuit. Our conclusions support the idea that complex vocal learning could already have been part of the arsenal of some of our extinct ancestors.

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Evolutionary and Medical Consequences of Archaic Introgression into Modern Human Genomes

Genes ◽

10.3390/genes9070358 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 9 (7) ◽

pp. 358 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Olga Dolgova ◽

Oscar Lao

Keyword(s):

Demographic History ◽

Modern Human ◽

Human Populations ◽

Human Genomes ◽

Fitness Consequences ◽

Genome Wide ◽

Anatomically Modern Humans ◽

Genome Wide Data ◽

History Of ◽

Health And Disease

The demographic history of anatomically modern humans (AMH) involves multiple migration events, population extinctions and genetic adaptations. As genome-wide data from complete genome sequencing becomes increasingly abundant and available even from extinct hominins, new insights of the evolutionary history of our species are discovered. It is currently known that AMH interbred with archaic hominins once they left the African continent. Current non-African human genomes carry fragments of archaic origin. This review focuses on the fitness consequences of archaic interbreeding in current human populations. We discuss new insights and challenges that researchers face when interpreting the potential impact of introgression on fitness and testing hypotheses about the role of selection within the context of health and disease.

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Evolutionary and Medical Consequences of Archaic Introgression into Modern Human Genomes

10.20944/preprints201806.0287.v1 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Olga Dolgova ◽

Oscar Lao

Keyword(s):

Demographic History ◽

Modern Human ◽

Human Populations ◽

Human Genomes ◽

Fitness Consequences ◽

Genome Wide ◽

Anatomically Modern Humans ◽

Genome Wide Data ◽

History Of ◽

Health And Disease

The demographic history of anatomically modern humans (AMH) involves multiple migration events, population extinctions and genetic adaptations. As genome-wide data from complete genome sequencing becomes increasingly abundant and available even from extinct hominins, new insights of the evolutionary history of our species are discovered. It is currently known that AMH introgressed with archaic hominins once they left the African continent. Current out of African human genomes carry fragments of archaic origin. This review focuses on the fitness consequences of archaic interbreeding in current human populations. We discuss new insights and challenges that researchers face when interpreting the potential impact of introgression on fitness and testing hypotheses about the role of selection within the context of health and disease.

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The origin, current diversity and future conservation of the modern lion ( Panthera leo )

Proceedings of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rspb.2006.3555 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 273 (1598) ◽

pp. 2119-2125 ◽

Cited By ~ 60

Author(s):

Ross Barnett ◽

Nobuyuki Yamaguchi ◽

Ian Barnes ◽

Alan Cooper

Keyword(s):

Evolutionary History ◽

Mitochondrial Control Region ◽

Modern Human ◽

Conservation Strategies ◽

African Origin ◽

Continental Scale ◽

History Of ◽

Physical Barriers ◽

Geographic Populations ◽

Sub Saharan

Understanding the phylogeographic processes affecting endangered species is crucial both to interpreting their evolutionary history and to the establishment of conservation strategies. Lions provide a key opportunity to explore such processes; however, a lack of genetic diversity and shortage of suitable samples has until now hindered such investigation. We used mitochondrial control region DNA (mtDNA) sequences to investigate the phylogeographic history of modern lions, using samples from across their entire range. We find the sub-Saharan African lions are basal among modern lions, supporting a single African origin model of modern lion evolution, equivalent to the ‘recent African origin’ model of modern human evolution. We also find the greatest variety of mtDNA haplotypes in the centre of Africa, which may be due to the distribution of physical barriers and continental-scale habitat changes caused by Pleistocene glacial oscillations. Our results suggest that the modern lion may currently consist of three geographic populations on the basis of their recent evolutionary history: North African–Asian, southern African and middle African. Future conservation strategies should take these evolutionary subdivisions into consideration.

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The evolutionary history of human spindle genes includes back-and-forth gene flow with Neandertals

10.1101/2021.11.29.470407 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Stéphane Peyrégne ◽

Janet Kelso ◽

Benjamin Marco Peter ◽

Svante Pääbo

Keyword(s):

Gene Flow ◽

Evolutionary History ◽

Common Ancestor ◽

Modern Human ◽

Modern Humans ◽

Ancestral Gene ◽

Cytoskeletal Structure ◽

Spindle Apparatus ◽

History Of ◽

Segregation Of Chromosomes

Proteins associated with the spindle apparatus, a cytoskeletal structure that ensures the proper segregation of chromosomes during cell division, experienced an unusual number of amino acid substitutions in modern humans after the split from the ancestors of Neandertals and Denisovans. Here, we analyze the history of these substitutions and show that some of the genes in which they occur may have been targets of positive selection. We also find that the two changes in the kinetochore scaffold 1 (KNL1) protein, previously believed to be specific to modern humans, were present in some Neandertals. We show that the KNL1 gene of these Neandertals shared a common ancestor with present-day Africans about 200,000 years ago due to gene flow from the ancestors (or relatives) of modern humans into Neandertals. Subsequently, some non-Africans inherited this modern human-like gene variant from Neandertals, but none inherited the ancestral gene variants. These results add to the growing evidence of early contacts between modern humans and archaic groups in Eurasia and illustrate the intricate relationships among these groups.

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SRGAP2 and the gradual evolution of the modern human language faculty

Journal of Language Evolution ◽

10.1093/jole/lzx020 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 67-78 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Pedro Tiago Martins ◽

Maties Marí ◽

Cedric Boeckx

Keyword(s):

Modern Human ◽

Human Language ◽

Language Faculty ◽

Gradual Evolution ◽

Human Language Faculty

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Minimal-assumption inference from population-genomic data

eLife ◽

10.7554/elife.24836 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 6 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Daniel B Weissman ◽

Oskar Hallatschek

Keyword(s):

Evolutionary History ◽

Simulated Data ◽

Large Samples ◽

Minimal Assumption ◽

Population Genomic ◽

Human Genomes ◽

History Of ◽

Or Gene ◽

Linked Selection ◽

Genomic Length

Samples of multiple complete genome sequences contain vast amounts of information about the evolutionary history of populations, much of it in the associations among polymorphisms at different loci. We introduce a method, Minimal-Assumption Genomic Inference of Coalescence (MAGIC), that reconstructs key features of the evolutionary history, including the distribution of coalescence times, by integrating information across genomic length scales without using an explicit model of coalescence or recombination, allowing it to analyze arbitrarily large samples without phasing while making no assumptions about ancestral structure, linked selection, or gene conversion. Using simulated data, we show that the performance of MAGIC is comparable to that of PSMC’ even on single diploid samples generated with standard coalescent and recombination models. Applying MAGIC to a sample of human genomes reveals evidence of non-demographic factors driving coalescence.

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Reconstructing the past

Evolutionary Genetics ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198830917.003.0009 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 214-249

Author(s):

Glenn-Peter Sætre ◽

Mark Ravinet

Keyword(s):

Phylogenetic Trees ◽

Evolutionary History ◽

Sequence Data ◽

Modern Human ◽

Evolutionary Relationships ◽

Human Populations ◽

Gene Trees ◽

Exciting Field ◽

History Of ◽

Life On Earth

How can genetics and genomics be used to understand the evolutionary history of organisms? This chapter focuses on such methods. First, the field of phylogenetics is introduced, as a way to visualize and quantify the evolutionary relationships among species. The chapter outlines how we go from aligning DNA sequence data to building gene trees and we argue that “tree-thinking” is fundamentally important for understanding evolution. The chapter also goes beyond phylogenetic trees to focus on phylogeography, i.e. the understanding of evolutionary relationships in a spatial context. More recently, the explosion of genomic data from ancient and modern human populations has made this an extremely exciting field which is transforming our understanding of our own evolutionary history. Before that, though, the chapter reviews how modern phylogenetics has arisen from historical efforts to classify life on Earth.

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Minimal-assumption inference from population-genomic data

10.1101/084459 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Daniel B. Weissman ◽

Oskar Hallatschek

Keyword(s):

Evolutionary History ◽

Simulated Data ◽

Effective Population ◽

Minimal Assumption ◽

Genome Data ◽

Human Genomes ◽

Single Genome ◽

Linkage Information ◽

Time Histories ◽

History Of

AbstractSamples of multiple complete genome sequences contain vast amounts of information about the evolutionary history of populations, much of it in the associations among polymorphisms at different loci. Current methods that take advantage of this linkage information rely on models of recombination and coalescence, limiting the sample sizes and populations that they can analyze. We introduce a method, Minimal-Assumption Genomic Inference of Coalescence (MAGIC), that reconstructs key features of the evolutionary history, including the distribution of coalescence times, by integrating information across genomic length scales without using an explicit model of recombination, demography or selection. Using simulated data, we show that MAGIC’s performance is comparable to PSMC’ on single diploid samples generated with standard coalescent and recombination models. More importantly, MAGIC can also analyze arbitrarily large samples and is robust to changes in the coalescent and recombination processes. Using MAGIC, we show that the inferred coalescence time histories of samples of multiple human genomes exhibit inconsistencies with a description in terms of an effective population size based on single-genome data.

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Ape Out of Water

Positive Evolutionary Psychology ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190647124.003.0003 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 26-36

Author(s):

Glenn Geher ◽

Nicole Wedberg

Keyword(s):

Evolutionary Psychology ◽

Evolutionary History ◽

Social Groups ◽

Daily Basis ◽

Modern Human ◽

Social Worlds ◽

Core Concept ◽

African Savanna ◽

Evolutionary Mismatch ◽

History Of

A core concept in the discipline of positive evolutionary psychology pertains to evolutionary mismatch. Evolutionary mismatch exists when the current environment of an organism is somehow inconsistent with the ancestral conditions that existed during the evolutionary history of that organism. Modern human environments differ dramatically from the conditions that surrounded our nomadic ancestors, who spent thousands of generations in the African savanna in small social groups. This chapter describes the issue of evolutionary mismatch in detail and then provides several examples of mismatch that adversely affect life for so many of us on a daily basis. Such issues include mismatches regarding diet, exercise, and the nature of our modern social worlds.

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Who Were the Denisovans?

Archaeology Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia ◽

10.17746/1563-0110.2020.48.3.003-032 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 48 (3) ◽

pp. 3-32

Author(s):

O. P. Derevianko ◽

M. V. Shunkov ◽

M. B. Kozlikin

Keyword(s):

Evolutionary History ◽

Human Gene ◽

Large Body ◽

Modern Human ◽

Northwestern Part ◽

Bone Tools ◽

Radiocarbon Dates ◽

Hominin Evolution ◽

Anatomically Modern Humans ◽

Genomic Studies

We provide a comprehensive summary of data relating to the origin, chronology, and culture of the Denisovans— a separate hominin population, fi rst described in 2010 on the basis of aDNA extracted from fossils found in Denisova Cave, in the northwestern part of the Russian Altai. We cite the results of morphological and genomic studies of the teeth and postcranial bones of those hominins. On the basis of a large series of optical and radiocarbon dates of the Pleistocene strata of Denisova Cave, the timeline for the hominin evolution in that region is reconstructed. The chronology of the evolutionary events based on aDNA is discussed. We provide a detailed description of stone and bone tools, and ornaments made of various materials, from Denisova habitation horizons. It is demonstrated that the Paleolithic cultural sequence in that cave is the most complete in North and Central Asia, spanning the principal stages of human evolutionary history over the last 300 thousand years. Denisovan origins and their role in the emergence of anatomically modern humans are reconstructed on the basis of a large body of archaeological, skeletal, and genetic data relating to Africa and Eurasia. It is concluded that the Neanderthal and Denisovan genetic legacy in the modern human gene pool indicates the existence of several zones in Africa and Eurasia where H. erectus evolution proceeded independently. The same applies to the evolution of lithic technologies.

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