Molecular Anthropology-Human Origin and Expansion

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This project was organized by two researchers from Japan (N.Takahata as PI,Y.Satta), three from the USA (M.Nei, M.Ruvolo, R.Deka), and one from Germany (J.Klein). During the term of the project, not only these members frequently exchanged ideas and generated a large body of DNA sequence data of MHC genes and mitochondrial DNA in primates, but also they used them or gathered available data together with solid theoretical and new statistical methods in order to elucidete evolution of primates in general and modern humans in particular.The divergence time of primates was estimated and the population dynamics was investigated. It became clear that some of main primate divergences took place much earlier than once thought. Also, all researches on the origin of modern humans consistently supported the African origin hypothesis over the multiregional hypothesis. However, the real evolutionary process of modern humans appears more dynamical than both hypotheses envisage. It is necessary to construct a more realistic hypothesis and relate it to knowledge in other fields of science.Klein and Takahata agreed that it is timely to publish a book based on our present results from theoretical considerations, experiments and data analyzes. This is almost done and we hope it will appear not long. One problem in our project remains unsolved, that is characterization ofthe human DNA in comparison with the closest relative DNA : While the differences between them is only 1% at the DNA level, the morphological differences look enormously large. Since it seems that a clue for this apparent paradox may reside in tiny changes in regulatory regions in the genome, we planned to integrate knowledge in developmental biology. Actually, much more was required and thus the achievement of this project is yet immature. We nonetheless believe that the project contributed to further development of molecular anthropology, not to a small extent.