Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for discoveries that provide our understanding of how modern-day humans evolved from extinct ancestors. The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has said that it has decided to award the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Svante Paabo “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution”.
BREAKING NEWS:
The 2022 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Svante Pääbo “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.” pic.twitter.com/fGFYYnCO6J— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 3, 2022
The award’s panel said his study also provides key insights into the immune system and human uniqueness compared with their extinct cousins. Paabo’s key achievements include sequencing an entire Neanderthal genome to reveal the link between extinct people and modern humans. Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans. He also made the sensational discovery of a previously unknown hominin, Denisova. Importantly, Paabo also found that gene transfer had occurred from these now extinct hominins to Homo sapiens following the migration out of Africa around 70,000 years ago. This ancient flow of genes to present-day humans has physiological relevance today, for example affecting how our immune system reacts to infections.
Sixty-seven-year-old Paabo performed his prizewinning studies in Germany at the University of Munich and at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. Paabo is the son of Sune Bergstrom, who won the Nobel prize in medicine in 1982. He became Professor at the University of Munich, Germany in 1990. In 1999 he founded the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany where he is still active. He also holds a position as adjunct Professor at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan.
The medicine prize kicked off a week of Nobel Prize announcements. It continues with the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday, and literature on Thursday. The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on October 10.
Last year’s medicine recipients were David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries into how the human body perceives temperature and touch. The prizes carry a cash award of nearly 900,000 US dollars and will be given on December 10 this year.