From - The Nobel Prize & Wikipedia,
Edited by Vinuri Randhula Silva,
Svante Pääbo (born 20 April 1955) is a
Swedish geneticist specialising
in the field of evolutionary genetics. As one of
the founders of paleogenetics, he has worked extensively on the Neanderthal genome. He
was appointed the director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany,
in 1997. He is also professor at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology,
Japan.
In 2022, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for
his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution"
Pääbo was born in Stockholm and
grew up with his mother, Estonian chemist
Karin Pääbo. His father was biochemist Sune Bergström, who shared the Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Bengt I. Samuelsson and John
R. Vane in 1982. Pääbo has via his father one brother, Rurik
Reenstierna, who was also born in 1955.
He earned his PhD from Uppsala University in 1986 for
research investigating how the E19 protein of adenoviruses modulates
the immune system
Pääbo is known as one of the founders of paleogenetics, a discipline that uses the
methods of genetics to study early humans and other ancient populations. In 1997, Pääbo and
colleagues reported their successful sequencing of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA),
originating from a specimen found in Feldhofer grotto in
the Neander valley.
In August 2002, Pääbo's department published findings about the
"language gene", FOXP2, which is lacking or damaged in
some individuals with language disabilities.
In 2006, Pääbo announced a plan to reconstruct the entire genome
of Neanderthals. In 2007, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of the year.
In February 2009, at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS) in Chicago, it was announced that the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology had completed
the first draft version of the Neanderthal genome. Over 3 billion base pairs were sequenced in collaboration with the 454 Life Sciences Corporation.
In March 2010, Pääbo and his coworkers published a report about
the DNA analysis of a finger bone found in the Denisova Cave in Siberia; the results suggest that the bone belonged to
an extinct member of the genus Homo that had .not yet been recognized, the Denisova hominind The discovery of the
Denisovan was the first time a previously unknown hominin was discovered by
means of DNA analysis.
In May 2010, Pääbo and his colleagues published a draft sequence
of the Neanderthal genome in the journal Science.. He and his team also
concluded that there was probably interbreeding between Neanderthals and
Eurasian (but not Sub-Saharan African) humans.There is general mainstream
support in the scientific community for this theory of interbreeding between archaic and modern humans. This admixture of modern human and
Neanderthal genes is estimated to have occurred roughly between 50,000 and
60,000 years ago in Southern Europe.
In 2014, he published the
book Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes where he, in the mixed form of a memoir
and popular science, tells the story of the research effort to map the
Neanderthal genome combined with his thoughts on human evolution
In 2020, Pääbo determined that more severe impacts upon victims
including the relative incidence of the necessity of hospitalization
requirements, and vulnerability to the COVID-19 disease has been associated via DNA analysis to be
expressed in genetic variants at chromosomal region 3, features that are
associated with European Neanderthal heritage. That structure imposes greater risks that those
affected will develop a more severe form of the disease. The findings are from Pääbo and researchers he leads at the
Planck Institute and the Karolinska Institutet.
As of 2021, Pääbo has an h-index of 162 according to Google Scholar and of 127 according to Scopus
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.
Awards and honours
In 1992, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research. Pääbo was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2000. In 2005, he received the prestigious Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine. In 2008, Pääbo was added to the members of the Order Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts. In the same year he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In October 2009, the Foundation For the Future announced that Pääbo had been awarded the 2009 Kistler Prize for his work isolating and sequencing ancient DNA, beginning in 1984 with a 2,400-year-old mummy. In June 2010, the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) awarded him the Theodor Bücher Medal for outstanding achievements in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. In 2013, he received Gruber Prize in Genetics for ground breaking research in evolutionary genetics. In June 2015, he was awarded the degree of DSc (honoris causa) at NUI Galway. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2016, and in 2017, was awarded the Dan David Prize. In 2018 he received the Princess of Asturias Awards in the category of Scientific Research, in 2020 the Japan Prize in 2021 the Massry Prize and in 2022 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for sequencing the first Neanderthal genome.
References -
1) Paabo, S., Ancien t DNA: extraction, characterization, molecular cloning, and enzymatic amplification. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 1989. 86(6): p. 1939-43
2) Paabo, S. and A.C. Wilson, Polymerase chain reaction reveals cloning artefacts. Nature, 19 88. 334(6181): p. 387-8.
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