The people of Near Oceania carry more Denisovan DNA than any other population on Earth — and a new study led by researchers at Yale University shows why the story behind it is more complicated than a single ancient encounter. Published June 11, 2026, in Science, the research reconstructs 831.9 million base pairs of Denisovan-derived sequence from the genomes of living people, roughly three times more than any previous analysis, and finds clear genetic evidence that modern humans interbred with Denisovans on at least three separate occasions as they moved into the Pacific.
A bigger, more detailed map of an ancient mixing event
The research team, led by Serena Tucci, assistant professor of anthropology and head of Yale’s Human Evolutionary Genomics Laboratory, with associate research scientist Patrick Reilly as first author, sequenced and analyzed 177 high-coverage genomes from 12 populations across Near Oceania — Papua New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands — alongside 1,284 previously published genomes from populations worldwide. Co-authors included researchers from Yale School of Medicine, Binghamton University, Temple University, and the Papua New Guinea Institute for Medical Research. By comparing patterns of shared ancestry across this much larger dataset, the team was able to distinguish DNA inherited from at least three genetically distinct Denisovan-like source populations, rather than the single introgression event earlier, smaller studies had been able to resolve.
Immune genes that never stopped mattering
The reconstructed Denisovan sequence isn’t just a historical curiosity. The team identified more than 3,100 Denisovan-inherited variants with evidence of altering gene expression in living people today, concentrated in genes tied to the interferon-gamma signaling pathway — a core part of the immune system’s response to viral and bacterial infection. The pattern suggests that as anatomically modern humans moved into a new disease environment in the Pacific tens of thousands of years ago, interbreeding with a population already locally adapted handed their descendants a genetic head start against local pathogens. The study also found evidence of positive selection acting on TRPS1, a gene involved in skeletal development, hinting that Denisovan ancestry shaped more than just immunity.
Funded through NIH’s basic genomics pipeline
The work was funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the National Human Genome Research Institute, both components of the National Institutes of Health — the same NIH infrastructure that underwrites much of the country’s basic population-genomics research. For CASRAI’s audience, it’s a useful example of how a foundational, hypothesis-generating genomics study (no clinical trial, no drug, no immediate application) still runs through the standard federal grant-funded research pipeline, with all the attendant compliance, data-management, and reporting obligations that come with an NIH award.
A data-sovereignty question ancient-DNA research can’t avoid
Studies like this one depend entirely on DNA voluntarily contributed by living Indigenous and descendant communities — in this case, people across Papua New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands, whose genomes carry the highest concentrations of Denisovan ancestry known. The involvement of the Papua New Guinea Institute for Medical Research as a named collaborating institution reflects a now-standard practice of partnering with in-country research bodies rather than sequencing samples with no ongoing local relationship. But ancient-DNA and population-genomics research as a field has a documented history of extracting genetic material from descendant communities with thin consent processes and no path for those communities to govern how their data gets reused, a gap the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics) were written specifically to address. Findings this significant — a discovery that reshapes what science understands about a population’s immune genetics — are exactly the kind of result that makes the question of who controls downstream use of that data, and who benefits from it, impossible to treat as an afterthought.
Source: Reilly, P.F., Tucci, S., et al., “Ancient Denisovan DNA Still Shapes Human Immunity in Near Oceania,” Science, June 11, 2026 (DOI: 10.1126/science.adr6749).
