The Strength of Selection against Neanderthal Introgression
A small percentage of Neanderthal DNA is present in the genomes of many contemporary human populations due to hybridization tens of thousands of years ago. Much of this Neanderthal DNA appears to be deleterious in humans, and natural selection is acting to remove it. One hypothesis is that the underlying alleles were not deleterious in Neanderthals, but rather represent genetic incompatibilities that became deleterious only once they were introduced to the human population. If so, reproductive barriers must have evolved rapidly between Neanderthals and humans after their split. Here, we show that observed patterns of Neanderthal ancestry in modern humans can be explained simply as a consequence of the difference in effective population size between Neanderthals and humans. Specifically, we find that on average, selection against individual Neanderthal alleles is very weak. This is consistent with the idea that Neanderthals over time accumulated many weakly deleterious alleles that in their small population were effectively neutral. However, after introgressing into larger human populations, those alleles became exposed to purifying selection. Thus, rather than being the result of hybrid incompatibilities, differences between human and Neanderthal effective population sizes appear to have played a key role in shaping our present-day shared ancestry.
