Submitted by bookposting5 t3_109v749 in askscience
xydanil t1_j413xb8 wrote
There isn't. If there's 3 million different genes between me and you, a Neanderthal can't possibly be 30 thousand away from both of us. Where did the 3 million go? So the comparison probably ignores the variance between different humans and makes a comparison off what we do have in common. And it probably also ignores the same portion in the Neanderthal genome. Which means, when comparing the portion of the genome humans share with each other with the portion Neanderthals share among themselves, there's a 30 thousand gene difference.
seamustheseagull t1_j415gwn wrote
This. It's "compare the average human genome against the average neanderthal genome".
Comparing a specific human against a specific neanderthal will probably yield 3,030,000 different genes.
UnarmedSnail t1_j45gor2 wrote
I'm thinking that the viable variations in early Sapiens, Sapiens/ Sapiens, Neanderthalis were few, and so the differences between our population today and then would be small as there are few working combinations in the genome "lock" as it were. Was the study done between hybridised Sapiens, Sapiens populations vs Sapiens, Neanderthalis, or non hybridised vs. Sapiens, Neanderthalis?
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