2026-07-30 カリフォルニア大学バークレー校（UCB）
A timeline showing four separate instances (colored arrows) of archaic hominins interbreeding with early Homo sapiens. The dates were inferred from a genealogical analysis of present-day human genomes using TRACE, a technique developed at UC Berkeley. Yulin Zhang and Priya Moorjani/UC Berkeley
＜関連情報＞
- https://news.berkeley.edu/2026/07/30/new-technique-pinpoints-human-dna-inherited-from-ghost-ancestors/
- https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aef8874
祖先組換えグラフを用いた古代ヒト科動物の遺伝子浸透の痕跡の復元 Recovering signatures of archaic hominin introgression using ancestral recombination graphs
Yulin Zhang, Arjun Biddanda, Sarah A. Johnson, Colm O’Dushlaine, and Priya Moorjani
Science Published:30 Jul 2026
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aef8874
Abstract
Admixture between modern humans and extinct hominins has shaped the genomes of present-day individuals, but reconstructing this history has been constrained by the scarcity of archaic samples and unadmixed outgroup populations. We introduce TRACE, a reference- and outgroup-free approach that uses features of ancestral recombination graphs to identify archaic ancestry. Simulations show TRACE has high precision and low false discovery rates. Applied to 1000 Genomes, TRACE recovers known Neanderthal and Denisovan introgression and uncovers ghost admixture from uncharacterized hominins in both Africans and non-Africans. Ghost ancestry persists in Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry deserts, challenging their interpretation as Homo sapiens–specific regions. In Oceanians, TRACE finds deep lineages are enriched in Denisovan compared to Neanderthal regions, supporting super-archaic introgression. TRACE enables mapping archaic introgression without archaic genomes.
