Nobel Prize winner Svante Paabo's work: Neanderthal genome, Denisovans

Scientist Svante Paabo, who won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is credited with discoveries that transformed the way we studied human evolution.

Paleogenetics
Pääbo is known as one of the founders of paleogenetics, which uses genetics to study early humans and other ancient populations. Paabo has been credited with transforming the study of human origins after developing approaches to allow for the examination of DNA sequences from archaeological and paleontological remains


Neanderthal genome
Paabo and colleagues extracted and sequenced the first Neanderthal genome from ancient bones, something then considered improbable. The draft sequence was published in May 2010. This species of archaic humans lived in Eurasia till about 40,000 years ago.

Because of Paabo's sequencing we can now compare a Neanderthal genomes with a human one. It led to the discovery that Neanderthals had interbred with us homo sapiens. Later studies found that around 1–4% of genomes of people in most parts of the world is of Neanderthal ancestry.

Denisovans
In March 2010, Paabo and colleagues brought to light the existence of a previously unknown human species called the Denisovans. This he did while studying a 40,000-year-old fragment of a finger bone discovered in Denisova cave in Siberia. It was the first time a previously unknown hominin was discovered using DNA analysis.
Denisovans may have survived as long as 14,500 years ago, and they apparently interbred with modern humans. Upto 5% Denisovan genes are found in many populations, the highest percentages occurring in Melanesians, Aboriginal Australians etc.

Paabo, 67, is the son of Sune Bergstrom, who won the Nobel prize in medicine in 1982. He performed his prizewinning studies in Germany at the University of Munich and at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. The prize is awarded by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden's Karolinska Institute and is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($900,357).