FILE PHOTO: Japan Prize 2020 laureate Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo poses with his trophy during the Japan Prize presentation ceremony in Tokyo, Japan April 13, 2022. Japan Prize this year awarded the winners including the years of 2020 and 2021. Eugene Hoshiko/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2022 was awarded to Svante Paabo, a scientist studying the origins of human beings. Paabo is also famous for his genetic research of ancient humans.
In 2022, the complete sequence of the human genome was published. This task took about forty years despite the fact that researchers have a huge number of samples available. About the same years that the Human Genome Project started, Svante Paabo began his career by asking: can the DNA of extinct hominids be sequenced? This task is much more difficult: unlike the intercellular substance of bones, the cells themselves persist poorly, and individual macromolecules, including DNA in them, are even worse.
Paabo first dealt with the mitochondrial genome, it is simpler and shorter. Then, when he managed to extract it and sequence, he passed over to nuclear genome. And by 2010, he had collected the first complete draft of the genome of an ancient human, the Neanderthal. And this is not just a technical achievement: it became possible to compare Neanderthal DNA with the genome of modern humans and draw conclusions about their kinship, as well as about how many ancient Neanderthal sequences survived in modern humans.
Therefore, when the bone of an unknown hominid was found in the South Siberian cave in 2008, it was sent for sequencing, including to the Paabo team. And he found out that there was the new population — now its representatives are called Denisovtsy by the name of the cave. Then, during excavations, other Denisovtsy were found, and paleogenetics, with Paabo’s participation, continue to find out when they lived and how they crossed with other ancient people. The discoveries made by Paabo’s colleagues and his followers may serve as the basis for future Nobel Prizes — in the meantime, the committee noted Paabo’s contribution to the development of methods for isolating, purifying and analyzing ancient DNA.