SCIENCE sciencemag.org 4 JANUARY 2 019 • VOL 363 ISSUE 6422 21

N

eanderthals are still among us,

Janet Kelso realized 8 years ago.

She had helped make the momen-

tous discovery that Neanderthals

repeatedly mated with the ances-

tors of modern humans—a find-

ing that implies people outside of

Africa still carry Neanderthal DNA

today. Ever since then, Kelso has

wondered exactly what modern humans

got from those prehistoric liaisons—beyond

babies. How do traces of the Neanderthal

within shape the appearance, health, or per-

sonalities of living people?

For years, evolutionary biologists couldn’t

get their rubber-gloved hands on enough

people’s genomes to detect the relatively

rare bits of Neanderthal DNA, much less

to see whether or how our extinct cousins’

genetic legacy might influence disease or

physical traits.

But a few years ago, Kelso and her col-

leagues at the Max Planck Institute for

Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig,

Germany, turned to a new tool—the UK

Biobank (UKB), a large database that

holds genetic and health records for half

a million British volunteers (see story,

p. 18 ). The researchers analyzed data from

112 , 338 of those Britons—enough that “we

could actually look and say: ‘We see a Ne-

anderthal version of the gene and we can

measure its effect on phenotype in many

people—how often they get sunburned,

what color their hair is, and what color

their eyes are,’” Kelso says. They found

Neanderthal variants that boost the odds

that a person smokes, is an evening person

rather than a morning person, and is prone

to sunburn and depression.

AMONG US

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SPOTTING EVOLUTION

The half-million people in the UK Biobank hold the genetic legacy

of Neanderthals—and clues to how we are still evolving

By Ann Gibbons

Among participants in the UK Biobank are people

whose Neanderthal DNA predisposes them to traits

such as propensity to sunburn, staying up late,

depression, smoking, and feeling lonely.

Published by AAAS

on January 3, 2019^

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