Reconstructing the Philippine Islander Denisovan Genome

Since their exit from Africa, modern humans have overlapped and interbred with Neandertals and Denisovans across time and space. However, our knowledge on these specific interactions remains largely limited.

This is especially true with the enigmatic Denisovans, where the only available sequenced genome is the Altai Denisovan from Siberia, despite the growing evidence indicating that Denisovans were likely widespread across Oceania and Southeast Asia, including the Philippines.

This is supported by my preliminary findings, where some Philippine Negritos surprisingly possess the highest Denisovan ancestry in the world – greater than the level in Oceanians – consistent with a distinct admixture event into Negritos from Denisovans.

Together with the recently described Homo luzonensisof the Philippines, it is likely that these two archaic forms of humans were genetically similar, possibly belonging to the same group residing on the islands.

Hence, in the absence of extractable ancient DNA from archaic remains, I will employ a multidisciplinary approach, and excavate using advanced computational means the surviving archaic DNA sequences from the genomes of 100 present-day Negritos, in the aim of reconstructing the Philippine Islander Denisovanor Homo luzonensisgenome.

This fossil-free excavation approach will have important implications in human evolutionary biology, advancing our understanding on how archaic humans shaped our past, our biology, and who we are as a species.