STOCKHOLM--Swedish anthropologist Svante Paabo won this year's Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his groundbreaking research into human evolution.
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The winner was announced on Monday at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, by Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Committee. Paabo has led the charge in comparing the genomes of modern humans and our closest extinct relatives, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, showing that there was mixing between the species. The Nobel Prize in Medicine was the first of a week's worth of awards to be given out. The physics prize will be announced on Tuesday,
followed by the chemistry prize on Wednesday, and the literature prize on Thursday. On October 10, 2018, the Nobel Committee in Economic Sciences will announce the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2022. David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their research on the body's perception of temperature and touch. On December 10, winners will receive checks for 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000). The funds come from a bequest made by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who established the prize and passed away in 1895.
Svante Paabo of Sweden received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research into human evolution. The Noble Prize committee lauded his efforts, saying he deciphered the Neanderthal genome, which seemed impossible at the time.
He also "sensationally" uncovered the Denisovans, a previously unknown relative.
He contributed to our understanding of our own species' origins and the global spread of the human race through his research. The research of the Swedish geneticist probes some of life's most fundamental questions, such as where we came from and what made Homo sapiens so successful while their ancestors became extinct.
Specifically, Prof. Paabo was curious about ancient, degraded DNA samples. In the eyes of many, it was an insurmountable obstacle. But he was the first person to successfully sequence DNA from an ancient bone that was 40,000 years old. The findings demonstrated that the Neanderthals, an extinct human ancestor that lived primarily in Europe and Western Asia, were genetically distinct from both modern humans and chimpanzees.
His work focused on hominins - the group of modern humans that includes us, Homo sapiens, but also our extinct relatives. The Nobel committee praised his work, saying that it "provides the basis for exploring what makes us uniquely human" by revealing genetic differences that distinguish all living humans from extinct hominins.
Additional comparisons of Neanderthal DNA with that of modern humans revealed a stronger similarity to European and Asian populations. This tells us that Homo sapiens had sex and children with Neanderthals after migrating out of Africa around 70,000 years ago. And you can still see the legacy of that today. Our immune systems are influenced by the 1–4% of our DNA that comes from our Neanderthal ancestors.
Finger of Cave
In 2008, researchers made another major discovery about our species' past. The Denisova cave in Siberia was the site of the discovery of a finger bone dated back 40 thousand years.
Prof. Paabo sequenced some DNA and found that it belonged to a group of hominins called Denisovans. Homo sapiens also interbred with the Denisovans, it was discovered. Up to 6% of the population in some regions of Southeast Asia has Denisovan ancestry. Prof. Paabo was contacted this morning by Thomas Perlmann, the committee's secretary. "He was so shocked that he couldn't even form a coherent sentence. Positively ecstatic, "prof Perlmann remarked. He collects the grand prize of 10,000,000 Swedish kronor (approximately £800,000).
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