Molecular Anthropology-Human Origin and Expansion

该项目由来自日本的两名研究人员（N.Takahata作为PI，Y.Satta），三名来自美国的研究人员（M.Nei，M.Ruvolo，R.Deka）和一名来自德国的研究人员（J.Klein）组织。在项目期间，这些成员不仅频繁地交换意见，产生了大量的灵长类动物MHC基因和线粒体DNA的DNA序列数据，但他们也利用它们或收集可用的数据，结合坚实的理论和新的统计方法，以阐明灵长类的一般进化，特别是现代人类的进化。研究了很明显，一些主要的灵长类动物分化发生的时间比我们以前认为的要早得多。此外，所有关于现代人类起源的研究都一致支持非洲起源假说，而不是多区域假说。然而，现代人类的真实的进化过程似乎比这两种假设所设想的更具活力。Klein和Takahata一致认为，根据我们目前的理论思考、实验和数据分析结果，出版一本书是及时的。这几乎完成了，我们希望它不会出现很长时间。在我们的项目中，有一个问题仍然没有解决，那就是人类DNA与最接近的亲属DNA相比的特征：虽然它们之间的差异在DNA水平上只有1%，但形态上的差异看起来非常大。由于这一明显矛盾的线索可能存在于基因组调控区域的微小变化中，我们计划整合发育生物学的知识。实际上，需要做的还很多，因此这个项目的实现还不成熟。尽管如此，我们相信该项目在很大程度上促进了分子人类学的进一步发展。

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.