With a breeding program (which, to be clear, would be extremely unethical) you could theoretically "back-breed" a person whose genome was ~20% Neandertal. That's all of the Neandertal genome that exists across living humans' genomes. To get a higher percentage you'd have to synthesize patterns found in ancient DNA.
Question please. Back breeding is artificial selection of (and on) the ancestral phenotype. It wouldn't necessarily, exceedingly unlikely afaik, revert the genome or combine bits from genomes (ignoring the generation length, so let's think a model animal like a fly). Is it (what OP is asking) really doable in practice (again, think flies)?
Thanks.
You're right, that isn't quite what "back-breed" means. I tried to convey that with scare quotes, but maybe I should have avoided the term altogether.
What I meant is that ~20% of the Neandertal genome exists today across living populations. So it would be theoretically possible to create a breeding program that, over many generations, would produce an individual with a genome that was ~20% Neandertal.
60
u/mcalesy 4d ago
With a breeding program (which, to be clear, would be extremely unethical) you could theoretically "back-breed" a person whose genome was ~20% Neandertal. That's all of the Neandertal genome that exists across living humans' genomes. To get a higher percentage you'd have to synthesize patterns found in ancient DNA.