Neandertals, the closest evolutionary relatives of present-day humans, lived in large parts of Europe and western Asia before disappearing 30,000 years ago. We present a draft sequence of the Neandertal genome composed of more than 4 billion nucleotides from three individuals. Comparisons of the Neandertal genome to the genomes of five present-day humans from different parts of the world identify a number of genomic regions that may have been affected by positive selection in ancestral modern humans, including genes involved in metabolism and in cognitive and skeletal development. We show that Neandertals shared more genetic variants with present-day humans in Eurasia than with present-day humans in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that gene flow from Neandertals into the ancestors of non-Africans occurred before the divergence of Eurasian groups from each other.

Although an inverse relationship is expected in ancient DNA samples between the number of surviving DNA fragments and their length, ancient DNA sequencing libraries are strikingly deficient in molecules shorter than 40 bp. We find that a loss of short molecules can occur during DNA extraction and present an improved silica-based extraction protocol that enables their efficient retrieval. In combination with single-stranded DNA library preparation, this method enabled us to reconstruct the mitochondrial genome sequence from a Middle Pleistocene cave bear (Ursus deningeri) bone excavated at Sima de los Huesos in the Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain. Phylogenetic reconstructions indicate that the U. deningeri sequence forms an early diverging sister lineage to all Western European Late Pleistocene cave bears. Our results prove that authentic ancient DNA can be preserved for hundreds of thousand years outside of permafrost. Moreover, the techniques presented enable the retrieval of phylogenetically informative sequences from samples in which virtually all DNA is diminished to fragments shorter than 50 bp.T race amounts of DNA can occasionally survive the decomposition of organic matter for long periods of time after the death of an organism. However, the retrieval of these ancient DNA molecules is severely impeded by their small size. DNA fragmentation is at least partly driven by depurination (1, 2), a continually occurring process. It is thus predicted that the degree of DNA fragmentation increases with sample age. This correlation has, in fact, been established in a recent study that analyzed samples of different ages from the same archeological sites (3), but the correlation vanishes in comparisons across different sites (4). The important role of environmental conditions, especially temperature, in DNA preservation is well recognized and reflected-for example, in the concept of thermal age (5). Unsurprisingly, permafrost environments have yielded the oldest credible records of DNA survival, including short stretches of plant and invertebrate DNA with an estimated age of up to 800,000 y that were amplified by PCR from Artic ice cores (6, 7) and the genome sequence of a 700,000-y-old horse published recently (8). More temperate environments have yielded many DNA sequences from the Holocene and the Late Pleistocene, some as old as ∼100,000 (9) or ∼120,000 y (10), but only a single study has convincingly raised the possibility of DNA survival extending far into the Middle Pleistocene outside of permafrost (11). In this study, short PCR products of ∼50 bp were retrieved from several bone samples of Middle Pleistocene cave bears from European caves, the oldest coming from the site of Sima de los Huesos (Atapuerca, Spain) and estimated to be >300,000 y old.It is important to note that direct PCR amplification provides limited power to reconstruct sequences from short DNA fragments, because only fragments that are long enough to allow for the hybridization of two PCR primers around a stretch of informative sequence are amena...

European population history has been shaped by migrations of people, and their subsequent admixture. Recently, ancient DNA has brought new insights into European migration events linked to the advent of agriculture, and possibly to the spread of Indo-European languages. However, little is known about the ancient population history of north-eastern Europe, in particular about populations speaking Uralic languages, such as Finns and Saami. Here we analyse ancient genomic data from 11 individuals from Finland and north-western Russia. We show that the genetic makeup of northern Europe was shaped by migrations from Siberia that began at least 3500 years ago. This Siberian ancestry was subsequently admixed into many modern populations in the region, particularly into populations speaking Uralic languages today. Additionally, we show that ancestors of modern Saami inhabited a larger territory during the Iron Age, which adds to the historical and linguistic information about the population history of Finland.

Current efforts to recover the Neandertal and mammoth genomes by 454 DNA sequencing demonstrate the sensitivity of this technology. However, routine 454 sequencing applications still require microgram quantities of initial material. This is due to a lack of effective methods for quantifying 454 sequencing libraries, necessitating expensive and labour-intensive procedures when sequencing ancient DNA and other poor DNA samples. Here we report a 454 sequencing library quantification method based on quantitative PCR that effectively eliminates these limitations. We estimated both the molecule numbers and the fragment size distributions in sequencing libraries derived from Neandertal DNA extracts, SAGE ditags and bonobo genomic DNA, obtaining optimal sequencing yields without performing any titration runs. Using this method, 454 sequencing can routinely be performed from as little as 50 pg of initial material without titration runs, thereby drastically reducing costs while increasing the scope of sample throughput and protocol development on the 454 platform. The method should also apply to Illumina/Solexa and ABI/SOLiD sequencing, and should therefore help to widen the accessibility of all three platforms.

Target‐capture approach has improved over the past years, proving to be very efficient tool for selectively sequencing genetic regions of interest. These methods have also allowed the use of noninvasive samples such as faeces (characterized by their low quantity and quality of endogenous DNA) to be used in conservation genomic, evolution and population genetic studies. Here we aim to test different protocols and strategies for exome capture using the Roche SeqCap EZ Developer kit (57.5 Mb). First, we captured a complex pool of DNA libraries. Second, we assessed the influence of using more than one faecal sample, extract and/or library from the same individual, to evaluate its effect on the molecular complexity of the experiment. We validated our experiments with 18 chimpanzee faecal samples collected from two field sites as a part of the Pan African Programme: The Cultured Chimpanzee. Those two field sites are in Kibale National Park, Uganda (N = 9) and Loango National Park, Gabon (N = 9). We demonstrate that at least 16 libraries can be pooled, target enriched through hybridization, and sequenced allowing for the genotyping of 951,949 exome markers for population genetic analyses. Further, we observe that molecule richness, and thus, data acquisition, increase when using multiple libraries from the same extract or multiple extracts from the same sample. Finally, repeated captures significantly decrease the proportion of off‐target reads from 34.15% after one capture round to 7.83% after two capture rounds, supporting our conclusion that two rounds of target enrichment are advisable when using complex faecal samples.