The Nobel Prize Selection Committee has announced that Swedish scientist Svante Pääbo has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for his discoveries about the genome of extinct ancient humans and human evolution.” Humans have always been interested in their origins. Where are we from? What made us Homo sapiens different from other ancient humans? Through his groundbreaking research, Svante Pääbo accomplished the seemingly impossible: sequence the genome of today’s extinct relative, the Neanderthals . He also discovered a previously unknown hominin known as the Denisovans. Importantly, Pääbo also found that genes were transferred from these now-extinct hominins to Homo sapiens after humans left Africa about 70,000 years ago. This ancient gene flow to today’s humans is physiologically relevant, for example affecting how our immune system responds to infection. Pääbo’s pioneering research gave birth to a whole new scientific discipline: paleogenomics. By uncovering the genetic differences between all living humans and extinct hominins, his findings provide a basis for exploring what makes us uniquely human.
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