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The just-announced winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is Dr. Svante Pääbo.
In the official press release of the Nobel Prize, his research gave birth to an entirely new field of science: paleogenomics, and revealed the genetic differences between modern humans and extinct.
What is the origin of this ancient human geneticist who has won the Nobel Prize alone?
(Note: The title picture is our own P)
Following the mother’s surname, the father is also a Nobel Prize winner
Swante Pääbo’s surname comes from his mother, Karin Pääbo, as he is the illegitimate son of his father, Sune Bergström .
He once recalled, “I grew up with my mother, who was not married. My mother was a chemist and worked in industry, and my father had another family…”
Karin used to work in Suen’s laboratory, and when the latter was married and had children, the two not only had a relationship, but also Swant. After that, his mother left the laboratory and remained unmarried.
To a certain extent, his father was not absent from Swante’s growth. Every Saturday, Swante’s father would come to see Swante and take Swante for a walk in the woods, or some other place he didn’t think he would recognize.
He wasn’t particularly bothered by the arrangement when Swante was a kid, and growing up he felt it was weird and threatened to knock on his father’s door, saying his brother had to know about it. His father agreed, but did not keep his promise. The half-brother didn’t know of Swante’s existence until 2004, shortly before Sue’s death .
Aside from these somewhat complicated family relationships, Swante Pabo’s family can be said to be a scientific family. His father was the chairman of the Nobel Foundation. Medicine Prize .
This is his father, father and son won the same Nobel Prize 40 years apart
My mother was an Estonian refugee from a difficult start, but she was able to enter Sweden’s top research institute with her own talents. My grandfather was also an outstanding mathematician . If he hadn’t died of the Spanish flu at the age of 30, he might have left his name in history.
(This family, the chaos may be a bit messy, but the talents of scientists are indeed full…)
My own love story has many twists and turns
In 1990, Pabo got an opportunity to move to Germany.
At the time, a genetics professor in Germany invited him to give a seminar and told him that in a year’s time there would be an assistant professor position available. Pabo set out to apply because his girlfriend happened to be in Munich at the time .
But after he submitted the application and finally passed, he has “no girlfriend” .
Pabo had both a boyfriend and a girlfriend all his life, until he met Linda Vigilant.
Linda is one of the well-known scientists in the primate field and studied for her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. Pabo was doing postdoctoral research in Berkeley’s Department of Biochemistry at the time.
In Neanderthal, Pabo wrote that Linda rode a motorcycle to the lab every day and was “attracted by her boyish cuteness and intelligence”. But Linda was married to another man in the research group at the time and moved to Penn State.
Before long, Pabo left Berkeley and returned to Munich. Linda and her family happened to come to Munich during their vacation, so the two had more communication. During a movie night, Pabo and Linda’s knees accidentally bumped together, and soon they were holding each other’s hands .
Fortunately, Linda actually revealed her inner thoughts to her husband very early, so that this “crisis” was no worse. When Pabo’s Institute started, the Linda family moved in and joined Pabo’s Institute. Linda’s then-husband also found a new love, and Pabo and Linda eventually came together.
When the Nobel Prize was awarded this year, the Nobel Prize official released a photo of Pabo after learning that he had won the award, with the text: (Pabo) After a moment of shock, the first thing I wanted to ask was if I could share this news with my own. Wife Linda shared.
And this happy picture was taken by Linda.
Figure | @The Nobel Prize/Twitter
A language expert who likes to say “cool”
Swante, who is a Swede, has no language problems at all. He speaks German, Swedish, and English, and can read Russian, French, Latin, Coptic (late ancient Egyptian), and Hieroglyphics (hieroglyphics) .
One of his favorite words in English is cool , to him, “Neanderthal DNA seems to be the coolest thing”, “It’s very cool to be able to revive genomes hundreds of thousands of years ago. Cool”, “It’s cool that Neanderthals contributed DNA to people living today.”
When talking about his scientific pursuits, he also summed it up with cool: “We (humans) are crazy in some ways. What drives it? I really want to understand this problem. Knowing this is true It’s very, very cool.”
Swante, who likes to use the word cool, is also a cool person!
Changed majors several times
In the beginning, Pabo actually wanted to study mummies.
At the age of 13, he traveled to Egypt with his mother and was immediately fascinated by pyramids and mummies. He aspired to be an Egyptologist, and at the age of 20 entered Sweden’s Uppsala University for a degree in Egyptology .
Unfortunately, he soon discovered that Egyptology is not about finding lost tombs in the desert, but about the grammatical structure of hieroglyphics and things like that. So in order to have a real job after graduation, Pabo switched to medicine .
When it was time for his Ph.D., he switched to molecular genetics . His Ph.D. topic is adenovirus, a virus that causes diarrhea, colds, and other symptoms. Pabo studies how the virus interacts with the body’s immune system.
However, he actually has a secret from his Ph.D. At nights and weekends, he also secretly works on a side project of his own — collecting soft tissue from multiple mummies and trying to extract DNA from the sample .
(True love for mummies.)
New research stems from… stinky beef liver
In the summer of 1981, a laboratory at Uppsala University in Sweden stinks.
The stench came from Pabo’s experiments, where he was tinkering with a piece of rotting liver .
At the time, no one knew if there was any genetic material in the thousand-year-old mummy wrapped in layers, so Pabo decided to experiment with beef liver first .
He mummified the beef liver by heating it to 50°C in a laboratory oven. After a few days, the liver became hard, dry and dark brown, and Pabo was able to extract DNA from it .
After the success of the experiment, Pabo started to use real guns and real mummies .
The original sample came from a friend of his, Rostislav Holthoer, a Finnish Egyptologist and director of a museum where some mummies were collected.
Rostislav did not allow Pabo to disembowel his mummies, but allowed Pabo to take samples from some of the mummies’ breaks for DNA extraction.
It’s a pity that after inspection, there was nothing but a lump of brown stuff in these mummified samples.
Frustrated, Pabo expanded his search for mummy samples and, with the help of a friend, found the German National Museum complex, which houses a large collection of mummies. In the samples taken there, Pabo did find the mummy’s DNA .
Mummies put him in the realm of paleogenetics
When Pabo built a molecular library of genes that could be cloned from the mummy, and was about to submit it to Nature, he found that someone had done a similar study first .
In 1984, Nature published a paper by Allan Wilson of the University of California, Berkeley, on extraction from a quagga (an extinct species) more than 100 years old. DNA.
Pabo was saddened to be “snatched”, but he felt that the other party might be interested in his research, so he sent his paper to Wilson .
Wilson was clearly so impressed with Pabo’s paper that he even thought Pabo was a Ph.D. supervisor, calling him “Professor” and expressing his desire to visit Pabo’s lab.
Pabo hurriedly wrote back and said that although your idea is unlikely, since I’m not even a Ph.D., can I go to your place to be a postdoc?
Figure 丨 Karsten Möbius
Wilson’s lab was a perfect fit for Pabo, and it was pretty much the only place dedicated to studying ancient genes, using PCR technology that had just emerged. Since then, Pabo has ushered in a real career turning point, and his research has embarked on a fast track .
In 1985, Pabo’s mummy research was also published in the journal “Nature”. He cloned a 3,400-base DNA fragment from the skin of the left calf of a child mummy about 2,400 years old.
Research expert and social expert
There are two main difficulties in the study of ancient human genetics:
1. How to distinguish real ancient human genes from foreign genes – other ancient biological genes, modern human genes, modern other biological genes… will bring pollution and noise;
2. How to convince others to let you study precious samples.
Any ancient sample is a little less, non-reproducible, non-reproducible being. To study the genes in it, the samples must be depleted and destroyed .
Pabo was a master at pioneering research methods and getting research samples.
Early in his research on mummies, he was able to persuade the curator of the mummy museum to let him sample a mummy’s break and take a small piece of skin or muscle tissue for DNA extraction.
In 1996, he persuaded the director of a German museum to allow him to take out a small Neanderthal specimen of the humerus for study , and it was this study that opened the way for Neanderthal genetic research.
Working with Russian paleoanthropologists, he obtained the little finger bone of a girl excavated in the Denisovan cave in Siberia. So the world knew about the Denisovans.
Talk big first, then work hard
Pabo himself recalled that when he publicly stated that he wanted to sequence the Neanderthal genome, he knew that it would take three things to do it: a lot of research money, lots of sequencers, and well-preserved Neanderthals. Det bones— he doesn’t have any of those three things, but luckily, only he knows he doesn’t have any .
He finally succeeded .
In 1997, Pabo identified the first genetic sequence from a Neanderthal for the first time . By comparing the DNA of Neanderthals and modern humans, he showed for the first time that Neanderthals were not a missing link in modern human evolution, but a different branch.
In 2010, Pabo first sketched the complete Neanderthal genome . This high-quality prehistoric human genome sequence can help reconstruct human evolutionary history.
Crouching down to make Neanderthals look taller｜thanhniennews.com
He also found that there had been interbreeding between Neanderthals and early modern humans .
Although there are no genetic similarities between Africans and Neanderthals, modern humans outside Africa have 1% to 4% of their DNA from Neanderthals. He also sequenced a Siberian man 45,000 years ago and found that he had relatively long Neanderthal genes in his body, which means that the ancestor of this man was probably 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. Ender gave birth to a mixed-race baby.
In other words, the evolutionary history of modern humans is not purely “out of Africa”, but “out of Africa, and by the way with some Neanderthals”.
on “Playboy”
That’s right, that male adult magazine.
But it wasn’t Pabo’s nude photos (mistakenly) that made it to Playboy, but his serious research on Neanderthals . Pabo also said, “This is probably my only chance to be on Playboy,” so he gave the interview.
The magazine wrote a four-page story called “Neanderthal Love: Would You Sleep With Such a Woman?” , accompanied by an illustration of a stocky, filthy woman wielding a spear.
This reminded Pabo that many people wrote to him, 47 people told him they were Neanderthals, 46 of them were men; 12 women wrote to him, but they didn’t think they were Neanderthals. Andertians, but think their spouses are Neanderthals!
Who the hell thinks he looks like this? ! ｜wikimedia commons
Discover More Than One Kind of Prehistoric Humans
In 2010, Pabo sequencing identified a phalanx more than 30,000 years old found in the Denisovan cave in Siberia, and discovered another prehistoric human, the Denisovan . His follow-up research revealed that the Denisovan-derived genes were found in Aboriginal Australians, New Guineans and Filipinos.
He also found that the genetic variants passed on to us by Neanderthals and Denisovans still have important physiological effects today because they affect our susceptibility to diseases such as diabetes, allergies, blood clots and ulcers .
Looking at the skull with a smile｜Frank Vinken
For example, a new study by him in 2020 found that Neanderthals were likely more pain-averse than modern humans because of genetic mutations that made them more sensitive to pain.
The key lies in a protein called NaV1.7, which acts like a “volume knob” for pain signals. If the protein is completely inactive, the pain signal is muted, and the person may not feel pain at all.
Neanderthals generally carried two copies of the “loud volume” NaV1.7 protein gene. This kind of “loud volume” gene is rare in modern people. In the genome database of modern British people, only about 0.4% of people carry one copy of the “loud volume” gene. These people report the probability of pain in life About 7% higher than those without this version of the gene.
Comparing the genes of modern humans and apes
Pabo has studied the FOXP2 gene, which is associated with brain development and speech pronunciation, and people with mutations in this gene tend to have language barriers.
He found that about 200,000 years ago, the FOXP2 gene in humans mutated, changing two amino acids. This mutation may have given humans a special gift for language, and it is also a key to human evolution .
Not optimistic about “resurrection of dinosaurs”
In addition to prehistoric humans, Pabo also measures other ancient creatures that interest him, such as mammoths, ground sloths, thylacines, and ancient corn.
However, he believes that “resurrection of dinosaurs” is difficult to achieve .
Water, oxygen, and background radiation all break down DNA, and even in extremely dry or extremely cold places, DNA can persist for hundreds of thousands of years at most.
“Cloning an organism from a genome that has been broken down into small pieces is probably not possible,” Pabo said. “And based on what we know about the chemical stability of DNA, it’s only possible to recover sequences that are about a million years old. So dinosaur DNA is not available.”
I think paleontologists are too quarrelsome
Pad said he was a layman in paleontology and was amazed at how quarrelsome scientists in the field were .
Why isn’t a field like molecular biology fighting so fiercely? He thinks this is because the scientific evidence of paleontology is too incomplete, and there are more paleontologists in the world than important fossils . If you want to become famous in this field, you must find new explanations for the existing fossils, and the new explanations are often contradictory with the previous explanations, and the predecessors may not like it.
In many other disciplines, people also disagree, but at least everyone generally agrees on what kind of data should be collected to solve problems.
But, in paleontology, you don’t know what evidence you’re going to find , and in most cases, you can’t test your own hypotheses oriented, it’s just like social anthropology or political science – only by screaming louder or listening to others Be more convincing to win .
This is probably why paleontologists are so quarrelsome.
Develop new methods and pay attention to technical details
Pabo continues to develop new methods of studying ancient genomes, and because of these new methods, he has been able to continue to expand our understanding of prehistoric and modern humans.
Pabo built an ultra-clean room to study ancient DNA, and explored the working rules of the ultra-clean room in practice .
In 2013, Pabo decoded the mitochondrial genome of a 400,000-year-old Spanish hominid, a study that caused a stir because DNA from this age had previously only been obtained from fossils in permafrost regions.
Pabo likens new technology to a baby, “You bring this baby into the world and you try to educate it and tell it what to do, but it doesn’t always do what you teach it to do. Sometimes, It can be frustrating that people publish work that makes you less comfortable with the results.”
There are very good Chinese students
Fu Qiaomei, a paleogeneticist in China, was under the tutelage of Swante Pabo .
Now, Fu Qiaomei is the director of the Ancient DNA Laboratory of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and has published a number of important ancient human DNA studies.
Pabo’s Chinese student Fu Qiaomei丨CCTV “Face to Face”
Guokr
One of the most important things for human beings has always been to know yourself.
Pabo, 67, is still an active researcher, still looking forward to discovering the world’s buried remains of unknown ancient human beings, each of which could become a precious piece of the puzzle.
The field pioneered by Pabo will provide us with a clearer understanding of where we come from and why we are human.
references
[1] (Sweden) by Swante Pabo. Neanderthals. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Education Press, 2019.02.
[2]The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2022, https://ift.tt/EiU9NCy
[3] Geneticist Svante Pääbo to Receive 2018 Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest. (2018). Retrieved from https://ift.tt/yqFHb31
[4] Fornication in DNA | Nutshell Technology is interesting. Retrieved from https://ift.tt/EQlqVA8
[5] Zagorski, N. (2006). Profile of Svante Pääbo. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(37), 13575–13577. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0606596103
[6] Zeberg, H., Dannemann, M., Sahlholm, K., Tsuo, K., Maricic, T., Wiebe, V., …Pääbo, S. (2020). A Neanderthal Sodium Channel Increases Pain Sensitivity in Present-Day Humans. Current Biology, 30(17), 3465–3469.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.06.045
[7] Callaway, E. (2020). Neanderthal gene linked to increased pain sensitivity. Nature. doi: 10.1038/d41586-020-02202-x
[8]Japan Prize 2020 goes to Svante Pääbo. (2020). Retrieved from https://https://ift.tt/xD5eJup
[9] Chen Xiaoxue, world authority on revealing the mystery of human evolution through genes | Exclusive interview, intellectual https://ift.tt/8hke3qM
[10] Gitschier, J. (2008). Imagine: an interview with svante pääbo. PLoS Genetics, 4(3), e1000035.
Dickman, S. (1998). Svante Pääbo: pushing ancient DNA to the limit. Current biology, 8(10), R329-R330.
[11]McKie, R. (2018). Svante Pääbo: the DNA hunter taking us back to our roots. the Guardian. Retrieved from https://ift.tt/uCVmNMj
[12] Paabo, S. (2014). Opinion | Neanderthals Are People, Too. New York Times. Retrieved from https://ift.tt/kTo9HFY
[13] Dickman, S. (1998). Svante Pääbo: pushing ancient DNA to the limit. Current biology, 8(10), R329-R330.
[14] McKie, R. (2018). Svante Pääbo: the DNA hunter taking us back to our roots. the Guardian. Retrieved from https://ift.tt/uCVmNMj
[15] Nast, C. (2011). Sleeping with the Enemy. New Yorker. Retrieved from https://ift.tt/jSmRkNK
[16] An Interview with Svante Pääbo. https://ift.tt/EC4FjOH
Following a long road to ancient DNA. https://ift.tt/F6HQ5dj
[17]MAPPING THE NEANDERTHAL GENOME: A Conversation with Svante Pääbo
https://ift.tt/8WbG1NH
Two days after tomorrow , the 2022 Nobel Prize will also announce the physics and chemistry prizes . Nutshell will still wait for the results of the Nobel Prize with you, and release the most reliable interpretation of the Nobel Prize as soon as possible.
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Authors: Su Qinian, You Shiyou, odette, Little Towel, Owl
Editor: You Shiyou, Li Xiaokui
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