Open QuestionDiscuss how both gains and losses of regulatory elements may lead to human-specific traits.
Open QuestionHow do copy-number variants arise? Do they account for more polymorphism than SNPs within the human population?
Open QuestionConsider possible societal and ethical dilemmas that might arise if we currently shared the planet with another hominin.
Open QuestionCarl Linnaeus, the 18th-century botanist who laid the foundation for the modern system of taxonomic nomenclature, placed chimpanzees and humans in the same genus. Discuss the merits of this classification.
Open QuestionDescribe how selection at a locus can result in a loss of polymorphism surrounding the locus.
Open QuestionHow can ancient DNA provide insight into past migrations that analyses of extant human genomes fail to uncover?
Open QuestionDenisovans are known from bones found in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, but traces of their DNA are found in Australians and Melanesians, whose ancestors likely migrated across Asia much farther to the south. How can these geographic differences be reconciled?
Open QuestionIn Island Melanesia and Polynesia, most mtDNA haplotypes are of Asian ancestry, whereas Y chromosome haplotypes are predominantly New Guinean. Provide a hypothesis for this sex-biased distribution.