The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2022 awarded to Svante Pääbo

Congratulations to Svante Pääbo who was just awarded the 2002 Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine!

Through his pioneering research, Svante Pääbo accomplished something seemingly impossible: sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans. He also made the sensational discovery of a previously unknown hominin, Denisova….Pääbo’s seminal research gave rise to an entirely new scientific discipline; paleogenomics….The question of our origin and what makes us unique has engaged humanity since ancient times. Paleontology and archeology are important for studies of human evolution….Pääbo accomplished the seemingly impossible and could publish the first Neanderthal genome sequence in 2010. Comparative analyses demonstrated that the most recent common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens lived around 800,000 years ago. Citations from the press release of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet