Nobel Prize for the Discovery of the Evolution of the Human Race

Who is the Nobel Prize award winner in Medicine 2022? Svante Pääbo from Sweden has been awarded for studying our extinct ancestors' DNA.

Highlights:

Humans are always fascinated by their origins and how they differ from similar species
Svante Pääbo, a Sweden geneticist has shown the ancient flow of human genes till present-day
All his discoveries which may explain unknown facts have been awarded the Nobel prize in medicine for the year 2022

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to Svante Pääbo for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct human species and human evolution, in an event held under the shadow of the bloody war in Ukraine ().

Humans are always been intrigued to know their origin. Many questions such Where do we come from, and how are we related to those who came before us? What makes us, Homo sapiens, different from other hominin species used to pop into their minds.

One such person is Savnte Paabo. He is the founder of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, and also serves as an adjunct professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

This 67-year-old geneticist is also the son of Sune Bergstrom who won the 1982 Nobel Medicine Prize for discovering prostaglandins, which are biochemical compounds that influence blood pressure, body temperature, allergic reactions, and other physiological phenomena.

Paabo will take home the award sum of 10 million Swedish kronor ($901,500), and will receive the prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on 10th December. This day is the death anniversary of scientist Alfred Nobel, who created the prizes in his last will.

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‘Svante Pääbo who has made genome sequencing of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans possible is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine 2022.’

Where do Humans Come From?

Research provided evidence that the anatomically modern human, Homo sapiens, first appeared in Africa approximately 300,000 years ago, while our closest known relatives, Neanderthals, developed outside Africa and populated Europe and Western Asia from around 400,000 years until 30,000 years ago, at which point they went extinct ().

About 70,000 years ago, groups of Homo sapiens migrated from Africa to the Middle East and, from there they spread to the rest of the world. Homo sapiens and Neanderthals thus coexisted in large parts of Eurasia for tens of thousands of years. But what do we know about our relationship with the extinct Neanderthals? Clues might be derived from genes.

By the end of the 1990s, almost the entire human genome had been sequenced. This was a considerable accomplishment, which allowed subsequent studies of the genetic relationship between different human populations.

However, studies of the relationship between present-day humans and the extinct Neanderthals would require the sequencing of genomic DNA recovered from archaic specimens.

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Sequencing the Neanderthal Genome is Possible

Early in his career, Svante Pääbo became fascinated by the possibility of utilizing modern genetic methods to study the DNA of Neanderthals. However, he soon realized the extreme technical challenges, because with time DNA becomes chemically modified and degrades into short fragments.

In 1990, He decided to analyze DNA from Neanderthal mitochondria DNA. With his refined methods, Pääbo managed to sequence a region of mitochondrial DNA from a 40,000-year-old piece of bone. Thus, for the first time, we had access to a sequence from an extinct relative. Comparisons with contemporary humans and chimpanzees demonstrated that Neanderthals were genetically distinct ().

At the Max Planck Institute in Germany, Pääbo and his team steadily improved the methods to isolate and analyze DNA from archaic bone remains. The research team exploited new technical developments, which made the sequencing of DNA highly efficient.

Comparative analyses demonstrated that the most recent common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens lived around 800,000 years ago.

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A Sensational Discovery: Denisova

In 2008, a 40,000-year-old fragment from a finger bone was discovered in the Denisova cave in the southern part of Siberia. The bone contained exceptionally well-preserved DNA, which Pääbo’s team sequenced.

The results showed the DNA sequence was unique when compared to all known sequences from Neanderthals and present-day humans. Comparisons with sequences from contemporary humans from different parts of the world showed that gene flow had also occurred between Denisova and Homo sapiens ().

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Paleogenomics and Its Relevance

Through his groundbreaking research, Svante Pääbo established an entirely new scientific discipline, paleogenomics. Following the initial discoveries, his group has completed analyses of several additional genome sequences from extinct hominins.

His discoveries have established a unique resource, which is utilized extensively by the scientific community to better understand human evolution and migration. New powerful methods for sequence analysis indicate that archaic hominins may also have mixed with Homo sapiens in Africa.

However, no genomes from extinct hominins in Africa have yet been sequenced due to the accelerated degradation of archaic DNA in tropical climates.

Homo sapiens or humans are characterized by their unique capacity to create complex cultures, advanced innovations, and figurative art, as well as by the ability to cross open water and spread to all parts of our planet is well known now ().

His works not only gave a new dimension to evolution but also provided some insights into the recent COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, His team found that a gene variant inherited by modern humans from Neanderthals when they interbred some 60,000 years ago made those that carry the variant more likely to require artificial ventilation if infected by the COVID-causing virus.

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed center stage in medical research, with many expecting that the development of the vaccines that have allowed the world to regain some sense of normality may eventually be rewarded.

Still, it typically takes many years for any given research to be honored, with the committees charged with picking the winners looking to determine its full value with some certainty amongst what is always a packed field of contenders.

References:

Discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution - (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2022/advanced-information/)
Patterns of damage in genomic DNA sequences from a Neandertal - (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17715061/)
Nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences from two Denisovan individuals - (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26630009/)
Million-year-old DNA sheds light on the genomic history of mammoths - (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33597750/)
The complete sequence of a human genome - (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35357919/)

Source-Medindia