Neanderthal admixture
Subject in Life Sciences
Neanderthal admixture has come up in 1 episode across 1 podcast in TMT, including Huberman Lab. 1 person has made recorded remarks about it.
What people said
Beth ShapiroAmerican evolutionary biologist and Chief Science Officer at Colossal Biosciences, formerly a professor at UC Santa Cruz and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator
Shapiro says a Neanderthal-derived variant at roughly 50% frequency in Asian populations was associated with worse COVID-19 outcomes.
“one of the first alleles that was discovered to be associated with negative risk or bad outcomes of COVID was a gene that came from Neanderthals”
Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 26:21
Shapiro says that pooling Neanderthal DNA fragments across living humans would reconstruct over 90% of the Neanderthal genome, implying most of it was not maladaptive.
“We would put together more than 90%, possibly more than 95% of the Neanderthal genome just from people who are alive today”
Huberman Lab: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth Shapiro (Oct 5, 2026) · Listen from 23:41
Podcasts
- Huberman Lab · 1 episode
Episodes
Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | Dr. Beth ShapiroHuberman Lab · Oct 5, 2026 · 2 h 16 min
Andrew Huberman talks with evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro about species concepts, Neanderthal DNA, Colossal Biosciences' de-extinction projects, genetic rescue, and the ethics of human genetic selection.