Stanford University A genome by itself is like a recipe without a chef – full of important information, but in need of interpretation. So, even though we have sequenced genomes of our nearest extinct relatives – the Neanderthals and the Denisovans – there remain many unknowns regarding how differences in our genomes actually lead to differences in physical traits. “When we’re looking at archaic genomes, we don’t have all the layers and marks that we usually have in samples from present-day individuals that help us interpret regulation in the genome, like RNA or cell structure,” said David Gokhman, a postdoctoral fellow in biology at Stanford University.