FOXP2

Ptak SE, Enard W, Wiebe V, Hellmann I, Krause J, Lachmann M & Pääbo S 2009 Linkage disequilibrium extends across putative selected sites in FOXP2. Mol Biol Evol 26:2181-2184.

• the fifth scenario is what the LD and Neandertal data are telling us prima facie
• namely, that the two amino acids are not associated with the selective sweep
• sometime after the human-chimpanzee split but prior to the modern human-Neandertal split, the two amino acid substitutions arose and became fixed
• possibly due to positive selection
• a selective sweep then affected FOXP2 in humans after their separation from Neandertals
• that two selective events affected a single gene during human evolution is obviously less likely than that a single event did so
• however, multiple selective events have been suggested for other genes in humans