Svante Paabo, a Swedish geneticist specialising in the field of evolutionary genetics, has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
"The 2022 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Svante Paabo for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution," the committee said upon announcing the winner.
Through his pioneering research, Svante Paabo 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. Importantly, Paabo also found that gene transfer had occurred from these now extinct hominins to Homo sapiens following the migration out of Africa around 70,000 years ago. This ancient flow of genes to present-day humans has physiological relevance today, for example affecting how our immune system reacts to infections.
Paabo's seminal research gave rise to an entirely new scientific discipline; paleogenomics. By revealing genetic differences that distinguish all living humans from extinct hominins, his discoveries provide the basis for exploring what makes us uniquely human.
