![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() He has worked as the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany since 1997, and is an Honorary Research Fellow at London’s Natural History Museum. Pääbo found that most present-day humans share 1% to 4% of their DNA with Neanderthals, meaning Neanderthals and Homo sapiens must have encountered one another and had children before Neanderthals went extinct around 40,000 years ago. “By revealing genetic differences that distinguish all living humans from extinct hominins, his discoveries provide the basis for exploring what makes us uniquely human.” “Pääbo’s seminal research gave rise to an entirely new scientific discipline paleogenomics,” the committee said. Thanks to his work, scientists can compare Neanderthal genomes with the genetic records of humans living today. His discovery was made public in 2010, after Pääbo pioneered methods to extract, sequence and analyze ancient DNA from Neanderthal bones. ![]() The Nobel Committee said Monday that Pääbo “accomplished something seemingly impossible” when he sequenced the first Neanderthal genome and revealed that Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals. Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo has won the Nobel Prize for medicine for pioneering the use of ancient DNA to unlock secrets about human evolution. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |