Paabo’s studies gave birth to an entirely new clinical field called paleogenomics and “generated a new part of our evolutionary history,” the Nobel committee said.
“By revealing the genetic differences that distinguish all living humans from extinct hominins, their findings provide the basis for exploring what makes us unique humans,” he said in a statement.
Paabo, founder and director of the genetics branch at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, discovered that the gene movement shifted from now-extinct hominins to Homo sapiens after migrating out of Africa about 70,000 years ago.
“This ancient gene for humans today has physiological relevance today, affecting, for example, how our immune formula responds to infections,” the jury said.
One example is that COVID-19 patients with a Neanderthal DNA extract are at increased risk of severe headaches from the disease, Paabo found in a 2020 study.
Paabo told reporters he was shocked when the committee called him to say he had won.
“At first, I thought it was probably an elaborate joke made through members of my (research) group. But then it seemed a little too serious, so I accepted the fact,” he said.
Paabo, 67. 10 million kronor ($901,500).
He is the son of Sune Bergstrom, a Swede who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1982 for finding prostaglandins, biochemical compounds that influence blood pressure, body temperature, allergic reactions and physiological phenomena.
In his 2014 memoir “Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes,” Paabo wrote that he conceived as a result of a secret extramarital affair.
He later told The Guardian newspaper that Bergstrom’s “official” circle of relatives knew nothing about the lifestyle of his mother or mother, Estonian chemist Karin Paabo, until 2005 after Bergstrom’s death.
Paabo also wrote in his memoirs that he “always considered himself gay” until he met the woman who would become his wife, primatologist Linda Vigilant, who also works at the Max Planck Institute. He now identifies as bisexual.
He achieved “the impossible”
It is known that Homo sapiens made the first impression in Africa about 300,000 years ago.
Our closest known relatives, Neanderthals, evolved out of Africa and populated Europe and western Asia about 400,000 to 30,000 years ago, when they went extinct.
This is that about 70,000 years ago, teams of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals coexisted in giant portions of Eurasia for tens of thousands of years.
“The last 40,000 years are quite unique in human history in the sense that we are the only form of humans. Until then, almost other types of humans existed,” Paabo told the Nobel website.
To examine the dating between present-day humans and extinct Neanderthals, DNA from archaic specimens had to be sequenced with DNA lines after thousands of years.
In 1990, Paabo controlled the mitochondrial DNA series from a 40,000-year-old bone.
“For the first time, we have had to film a missing relative,” the Nobel Prize jury said.
Comparisons with recent humans and chimpanzees have shown that Neanderthals were genetically distinct.
Paabo then “accomplished the impossible,” the committee said, when it published the first series of the Neanderthal genome in 2010.
It showed that the most recent and common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens lived about 800,000 years ago.
Paabo and his team showed that Neanderthal DNA sequences more closely resembled those of recent humans from Europe or Asia than those from Africa.
“This is that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens interbred during their millennia of coexistence,” the Nobel Prize jury said.
In modern humans of European or Asian descent, about one to four of the genome originated from Neanderthals.
New addition to the kin circle tree
In 2008, Paabo and his team sequenced a 40,000-year-old bone fragment discovered in Denisova Cave in southern Siberia.
It contained exceptionally well-preserved DNA.
“The effects caused a sensation: the DNA series is unique compared to all known Neanderthal and human series today,” the Nobel Prize jury said.
Paabo had discovered an unknown hominid in the past called Denisova.
The comparisons showed that this gene also occurred between Denisovans and Homo sapiens.
In the same cave, paleontologists later found the fossil of a young woman who was part of Neanderthal, part of Denisovan, proving that the two species interbred.
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