A passage is given below with five blanks labelled (A)-(E). Below the passage, five options are given for each blank. Choose the word that fits each blank most appropriately in the context of the passage, and mark the corresponding answer.

If your arthritis is bad today or you’re ____(A)____ on aloe vera for an early autumn sunburn, Neanderthals may be partly to blame. Scientists announced the second complete, high-quality sequencing of a Neanderthal genome, made using the 52,000-year-old bones of a female found in the Vindija cave in Croatia. Together with the genomes from another Neanderthal woman and a host of modern humans, a suite of analyses is yielding new clues about how DNA from Neanderthals contributed to our genetic makeup and might still be affecting us today.

But don’t go blaming Neanderthals for all your medical woes, cautions study leader Kay Prüfer at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. After all, hundreds if not thousands of factors influence gene expression. “These are just associations, so that doesn’t mean if you have a particular variant of a gene, you either will or won’t have a disease. It means sometimes you might,” Prüfer says. What’s more, some of the Neanderthal contributions are ___(B)___ helpful.

The DNA used to construct the new genome came from an individual dubbed Vindija 33.19, named for the cave where her bone fragments were found. Though partial genomes have been sequenced from at least five other individuals, the Vindija bone fragments preserved enough intact DNA for Prüfer and his colleagues to ___(C)___ out a highly detailed genome. From there, they were able to distinguish between the two sets of genes the Vindija female inherited from her parents. That’s only been accomplished once before, from a 122,000-year-old sample from the so-called Altai Neanderthal found in Siberia. By effectively doubling the amount of detailed Neanderthal genetic information, researchers are starting to more accurately home in on just how much Neanderthal DNA persists in modern humans and where, exactly, it comes from.

The team compared the Altai Neanderthal’s genes with genetic and—for the first time—physiological data from 112,000 individuals of northern European descent who contributed their information to the UK Biobank.  Dannemann and Kelso found 15 regions in the Altai Neanderthal genome that frequently overlap with sections of the Biobank group’s genomes. These genes determine hair and eye colour, how badly you sunburn and even sleep time preference, or whether you’re a morning person or a night owl. Again, just having the gene isn’t a guarantee for anything—the Neanderthal genes are just as likely as modern genes to have an effect. But it’s intriguing to know that they remain firmly ___(D)____ in our makeup.

Dannemann says he and Kelso plan on repeating the research using the new Vindija genome and an expanded Biobank cohort of 500,000 people, hoping to reveal even more hidden associations. “The data are still pretty sparse, but hopefully it will not take as long to double the Neanderthal genome again,” Dannemann says. “Having more references will help us understand if certain gene variations were common in Neanderthals.” Miguel Vilar, the lead scientist for National Geographic’s Genographic Project, says Vindija is a great advance in building a more complete picture of Neanderthal history, as well as understanding how their ancestry affects us still. He expects even more genetic information to flow from labs around the world, rapidly ____(E)_____ what we know.