Svante Pääbo Conferred With Nobel Prize in Medicine

Stockholm: The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute presented the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo on Monday.

According to a statement on their official website, Pääbo received the top prize “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution”.

Pääbo “accomplished something seemingly impossible: sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans”, the statement added.

The release further stated that the iconic discovery of a previously unidentified hominin was also done by the Swedish geneticist.

Humans today still benefit physiologically from this ancient gene flow because it influences, for example, how our immune systems respond to infections.

Paleogenomics was created as a result of Pääbo’s groundbreaking study. His insights lay the groundwork for investigating what makes us specifically human by exposing genetic variations that set all living humans apart from extinct hominins, the Nobel Assembly stated in a press release.