The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Sweden’s Svante Paabo for his work on human evolution.
He also accomplished the “sensational” achievement of identifying the hitherto unidentified kin group known as Denisovans.
His research aided in the investigation of our own evolutionary past and the global dispersal of humanity.
The work of the Swedish geneticist provides answers to some of the most fundamental problems, including our origins and what made it possible for Homo sapiens to survive while our ancestors vanished.
He was just off to pick his daughter up from a sleepover when he got the call saying he’d won. He told the BBC: “I was very surprised and overwhelmed, I had not expected this.”
Say good morning to our new medicine laureate Svante Pääbo!
Pääbo received the news while enjoying a cup of coffee. After the shock wore off, one of the first things he wondered was if he could share the news with his wife, Linda.
Photo: Linda Vigilant pic.twitter.com/l27hnzojaL
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 3, 2022
Human genetic code decipherment research was moving quickly in the 1990s. But that required recent, spotless DNA samples.
The outdated, deteriorated, and tainted genetic material from our forefathers piqued Prof. Paabo’s curiosity. Many people believed it to be an impossible task. However, he was able to sequence DNA from a sample of 40,000-year-old bone for the first time.
These findings demonstrated the differences between Neanderthals, who predominately inhabited Europe and Western Asia, and contemporary humans and chimps.
