Neanderthal ancestry is not present in all regions of our genome. Some regions do not have Neanderthal DNA, while others have significant levels of it.
This indicates that a lot of the genetic material from Neanderthals that humans picked up must have disappeared due to the process of natural selection.
However, certain genes stuck around throughout the generations, most likely because they provided benefits to our survival.
The researchers uncovered 347 Neanderthal genes that were well-preserved in both ancient and modern-day populations, suggesting that as modern humans ventured outside of Africa, they encountered new environmental pressures, and many of these genes gave them survival advantages.
The beneficial Neanderthal genes were mostly found in regions of the genome “related to skin pigmentation, metabolism, and immunity.”
The study can be found on bioRxiv, a preprint server for topics on biology.
