[kjander79]

Sounds to me they are saying this is a significant reduction in the Neanderthal genes that survive today, down to 4303 that can't be attributed to other human variants. This would make more sense to me, as the usual statement of up to 4% of a person's genes would be enough to create a unique species, wouldn't it?

[causality0]

That depends entirely on what the genes in question do. Some pairs of species can produce viable offspring even though the parent species have different numbers of chromosomes.

[kjander79]

I'm editing this because I'm wrong but leaving original comment below.

On second thought, this research wouldn't be looking at genes that would be highly variable among human populations, that DNA tests would profile to identify individuals, but on genes highly conserved among the human genome, where 4303 changed genes would be a significant amount. I was ranting about the wrong thing.

Original comment: Point taken. Speciation is certainly messy.

4303 statistically significant coding genes is just essentially "a good start" when it comes to identify what, if any, Neanderthal inheritance modern humans might have, compared to a potential "4% of genes DNA tests bother profiling, which now could have still come from some undetermined modern human population, that just so happened to have the same alleles as Neanderthals, including non-coding genes that we couldn't pinpoint effects anyways".

I think that would explain the ambiguity in the articles about actual effects of these identified genes, that's for the follow-up research.

[anonymouskimmer]

Neanderthals themselves were barely a unique species compared to sapiens, and they had 100% Neanderthal variants. 4% of the genome consisting of their variants makes a variety, at best.