Good losses?

What makes humans unique is a question that is raised very often. A study that looked at sequences that are highly conserved in chimpanzees, our closest relatives, has revealed that there are 510 deletions of non-coding regions in humans that are mainly related to hormone signaling and neural functions. Transgenic analysis of a chimpanzee and a mouse to explore the function and expression of deleted elements show that these deletions appear to correlate with both loses and gains of traits that are unique to humans and also might have played an important role in the evolution of Anatomically Modern Humans. Examples mentioned include losses that led to tissue expansion, such as expansion of the cerebral cortex and loss of penile spines. The study also reports that of these deletions 88% are reported missing from the Neanderthal genome.