ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2024
Denisovan admixture facilitated environmental adaptation in Papua New Guinean populations.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Ancient DNA and Human Physiology.Physiology (Bethesda, Md.) · 2026Review
- A global map for introgressed structural variation and selection in humans.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Archaic Introgression Shapes Genetic Variation at Loci Associated With DNA Virus Load in Modern Humans.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Mapping the gene regulatory landscape of archaic hominin introgression in modern Papuans.PLoS genetics · 2026Article
- Recent advances in methods to characterize archaic introgression in modern humans.Genome research · 2026Review
- Buried Treasure? Overlooked and Newly Discovered Evolutionary Contributions to Human Brain Diseases.Annals of neurology · 2025Review
- A history of multiple Denisovan introgression events in modern humans.Nature genetics · 2024Review
- Genetic Signatures of Positive Selection in Human Populations Adapted to High Altitude in Papua New Guinea.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Denisovan admixture facilitated environmental adaptation in Papua New Guinean populations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Neandertals and Denisovans, having inhabited distinct regions in Eurasia and possibly Oceania for over 200,000 y, experienced ample time to adapt to diverse environmental challenges these regions presented. Among present-day human populations, Papua New Guineans (PNG) stand out as one of the few carrying substantial amounts of both Neandertal and Denisovan DNA, a result of past admixture events with these archaic human groups. This study investigates the distribution of introgressed Denisovan and Neandertal DNA within two distinct PNG populations, residing in the highlands of Mt Wilhelm and the lowlands of Daru Island. These locations exhibit unique environmental features, some of which may parallel the challenges that archaic humans once confronted and adapted to. Our results show that PNG highlanders carry higher levels of Denisovan DNA compared to PNG lowlanders. Among the Denisovan-like haplotypes with higher frequencies in highlander populations, those exhibiting the greatest frequency difference compared to lowlander populations also demonstrate more pronounced differences in population frequencies than frequency-matched nonarchaic variants. Two of the five most highly differentiated of those haplotypes reside in genomic areas linked to brain development genes. Conversely, Denisovan-like haplotypes more frequent in lowlanders overlap with genes associated with immune response processes. Our findings suggest that Denisovan DNA has provided genetic variation associated with brain biology and immune response to PNG genomes, some of which might have facilitated adaptive processes to environmental challenges.
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