«In many ways, the invasive expansion of [the marbled crayfish] is analogous to a cancerous lineage spreading asexually at the expense of its host,» says Jean - François Flot, an evolutionary genomicist at the Free University of Brussels who was not involved with the work. (sciencemag.org)
«They left many beneficial variants behind in Africa,» says evolutionary genomicist Tony Capra of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, who reported the results. (sciencemag.org)
For Neandertal genomics to come into its own, however, Pääbo, Rubin, and others must demonstrate that their sequences are real and not a mosaic of errors due to degradation that occurs as DNA ages, sequencing mistakes, or contamination from modern humans who have handled the fossils, says genomicist Stephan Schuster of Pennsylvania State University in State College. (sciencemag.org)