Chinese geneticist Fu Qiaomei has refreshed study into the status of human beginnings by developing ancient DNA extracting techniques and applying advanced, next-generation gene sequencing techniques to decode the genome of ancient humans.

Advances in ancient DNA sequencing are shedding light on the genetic links between our Stone Age ancestors and modern humans, say Chinese researchers, allowing researchers to untangle the twisting branches of the human family tree.

Chinese researchers are discovering unexpected genetic connections between individuals on opposing sides of Eurasia with direct DNA sequencing. Their study suggests a complex history that may represent early gene flow across Eurasia or an early population structure that eventually led to Europeans and Asians.

The biological makeup of humans in East Asia is shaping up to be a very complex story, with greater diversity and more distant contacts than previously known, according to a new study in Current Biology analyzing the genome of a man that died in the Tianyuan Cave near Beijing, China 40,000 years ago. His bones had enough DNA molecules left that a team led by Professor FU Qiaomei could use advanced ancient DNA sequencing techniques to retrieve DNA from him that spans the human genome.

Ten of China's leading scientists who have made significant impacts in fields ranging from neuroscience and neutrinos to space science and structural biology were highlighted in Nature magazine's online edition on Monday.

Ten Chinese researchers were named “Science Stars of China” by British interdisciplinary scientific journal Nature for their “big impact” in China from ancient DNA to neutrinos and neuroscience; half of them are from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

A research team led by Prof. FU Qiaomei from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IVPP of CAS) and other international scientists has analyzed genome-wide data from 51 Eurasians from ~45,000-7,000 years ago and provided the first vivid look at the genetic history of modern humans in Eurasia before the start of agriculture ~8,500 years ago. Their findings were published as an ARTICLE in Nature with the title “The genetic history of Ice Age Europe” on May 2.

Interspecies sex between ancient humans and Neanderthals – a relative of our ancestors who had smaller figure and low, flat, elongated skulls like dwarfs in the in The Lord of the Rings – had given 1.6 to 1.8 percent Neanderthals' gene to every one in Europe and Asia nowadays.

Using several genetic analytical methods, an international research team has identified an interbreeding event between Neanderthals and modern humans that occurred about 100,000 years ago – tens of thousands of years earlier than previous scientific estimates. Dr. FU Qiaomei, a researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is part of the team that made this ground-breaking discovery, which was published February 17 in the journal Nature.

Fossil evidence from one of the earliest modern humans in Europe shows the specimen shared between 6 and 9% of its genome with Neanderthals, the highest amount of any human sequenced to date, according to recent findings from researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, Harvard Medical School and the Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins in Beijing.

There is evidence that anatomically modern humans interacted with Neanderthals during the time that they both lived in Europe: changes in tool making technology, burial rituals, and body decoration imply a cultural exchange between the groups.

Dr. FU Qiaomei, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, and scientists from Germany, USA, Romania and Canada, discovered that a 37,000–42,000-year-old modern human from Peştera cu Oase, Romania had the order of 6–9% of the genome derived from Neanderthals, more than any other modern human sequenced to date. The finding published online June 22 in Nature suggests that the mixture between modern humans and Neanderthals was not limited to the first ancestors of present-day people to leave Africa, or to people in the Near East, and it occurred later as well and probably in Europe.