Svante Pääbo

Svante Pääbo Template:Post-nominals (Template:IPA;<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref> born 20 April 1955) is a Swedish geneticist and Nobel Laureate who specialises in the field of evolutionary genetics.<ref name="gs">Template:Google Scholar ID</ref> As one of the founders of paleogenetics, he has worked extensively on the Neanderthal genome.<ref name=kolbert>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref name=lostgenomes /> In 1997, he became founding director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Since 1999, he has been an honorary professor at Leipzig University; he currently teaches molecular evolutionary biology at the university.<ref name="Heckmann2020">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Heckmann2022">Template:Cite web</ref> He is also an adjunct professor at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2022, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="ReutersNobel">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Education and early life

Pääbo was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1955 and grew up there with his mother,<ref name=kolbert /> Estonian chemist Karin Pääbo (Template:IPA; 1925–2013), who had escaped from the Soviet invasion in 1944<ref name="Eesti Päevaleht">Template:Cite news</ref> and arrived in Sweden as a refugee during World War II.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite newsTemplate:Subscription required</ref> He was born through an extramarital affair<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> of his father, Swedish biochemist Sune Bergström (1916–2004),<ref name=kolbert /> who, like his son, became a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (in 1982).<ref name=forbes /> Pääbo is his mother's only child; he has via his father's marriage a half-brother, Rurik Reenstierna (also born in 1955), who only learned Svante was his brother in 2004.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Pääbo grew up as a native Swedish speaker.<ref name="Eesti Päevaleht"/> In a 2012 interview with the Estonian newspaper Eesti Päevaleht, he said that he self-identifies as a Swede, but has a "special relationship with Estonia".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1975, Pääbo began studying at Uppsala University, serving one year in the Swedish Defense Forces attached to the School of Interpreters. Pääbo earned his Ph.D. from Uppsala University in 1986 for research investigating how the E19 protein of adenoviruses modulates the immune system.<ref name=phd>Template:Cite thesis</ref>

Research and career

File:SvantePääbo.jpg

Pääbo at the 2014 Nobel Conference

Pääbo is known as one of the founders of paleogenetics, a discipline that uses genetics to study early humans and other ancient species.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

From 1986 to 1987, he did postdoctoral research at the Institute for Molecular Biology II, University of Zurich, Switzerland.<ref name="MaxPlanch">Template:Cite web</ref>

As an EMBO Postdoctoral Fellow, Pääbo moved to the United States in 1987, accepting a position as a postdoctoral researcher in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where he joined Allan Wilson's lab and worked on the genome of extinct mammals.<ref name=MaxPlanch/><ref name=SciAm>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1990, he returned to Europe to become professor of general biology at the University of Munich, and, in 1997, he became founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.<ref name=SciAm/>

In 1997, Pääbo and colleagues reported their successful sequencing of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), originating from a specimen found in Feldhofer grotto in the Neander valley.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Rincon 2018">Template:Cite web</ref>

In August 2002, Pääbo's department published findings about the "language gene", FOXP2, which is mutated in some individuals with language disabilities.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In 2006, Pääbo announced a plan to reconstruct the entire genome of Neanderthals. In 2007, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of the year.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

In February 2009, at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago, it was announced that the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology had completed the first draft version of the Neanderthal genome.<ref>Callaway, Ewen (12 February 2009) First draft of Neanderthal genome is unveiled Template:Webarchive New Scientist, Life. Retrieved 13 February 2015.</ref> Over 3 billion base pairs were sequenced in collaboration with the 454 Life Sciences Corporation.<ref>Template:Cite press release</ref>

In March 2010, Pääbo and his coworkers published a report about the DNA analysis of a finger bone found in the Denisova Cave in Siberia; the results suggest that the bone belonged to an extinct member of the genus Homo that had not yet been recognised, the Denisova hominin.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Pääbo first wanted to classify the Denisovans as a species of their own, separate from modern humans and Neanderthals but changed his mind after peer-review.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In this context, Svante Pääbo was able to show that the TKTL1 gene discovered by Johannes F. Coy has a single amino acid substitution in Neanderthals compared to modern humans. This change probably influenced neuronal development and may have contributed to the difference in brain structure between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In May 2010, Pääbo and his colleagues published a draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome in the journal Science.<ref>Template:Cite journal.</ref> He and his team also concluded that there was probably interbreeding between Neanderthals and Eurasian (but not Sub-Saharan African) humans.<ref name=bbc05062010>Template:Cite news</ref> There is general mainstream support in the scientific community for this theory of interbreeding between archaic and modern humans.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> This admixture of modern human and Neanderthal genes is estimated to have occurred roughly between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, in the Middle East.<ref>Template:Cite web "By way of explanation, the investigators suggest that the interbreeding occurred in the Middle East between 45,000 and 80,000 years ago, before moderns fanned out to other parts of the Old World and split into different groups."</ref>

In 2014, he published the book Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes where he, in the mixed form of a memoir and popular science, tells the story of the research effort to map the Neanderthal genome combined with his thoughts on human evolution.<ref name=forbes>Peter Forbes (20 February 2014) Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes by Svante Pääbo – review Template:Webarchive</ref><ref>Simon Underdown (3 April 2014) Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes, by Svante Pääbo Template:Webarchive Times Higher Education. Retrieved 1 July 2014.</ref>

In 2020, Hugo Zeberg and Svante Pääbo determined that more severe impacts upon victims of the COVID-19 disease, including the vulnerability to it and the incidence of the necessity of hospitalisation, have been associated via DNA analysis to be expressed in genetic variants at chromosomal region 3, features that are associated with European Neanderthal heritage. That structure imposes greater risks that those affected will develop a more severe form of the disease.<ref name=Neanderthal>The ancient Neanderthal in severe COVID-19 Template:Webarchive, Science News, 30 September 2020. Retrieved 13 December 2020.</ref> The findings were described in a Nature article with Hugo Zeberg from Karolinska Institutet and Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute.<ref name=Neanderthal />

Template:As of, Pääbo has an h-index of 167 according to Google Scholar<ref name=gs /> and of 133 according to Scopus.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Awards and honours

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Pääbo showed the medal of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Fumio Kishida (February 1, 2023).

In 1992, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research. Pääbo was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2000, and in 2004 was elected an international member of the National Academy of Sciences.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2005, he received the prestigious Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine.<ref name="Louis-Jeantet Prize" /> In 2008, Pääbo was added to the members of the Order Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts. In the same year, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In October 2009, the Foundation For the Future announced that Pääbo had been awarded the 2009 Kistler Prize for his work isolating and sequencing ancient DNA, beginning in 1984 with a 2,400-year-old mummy.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In June 2010, the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) awarded him the Theodor Bücher Medal for outstanding achievements in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2013, he received Gruber Prize in Genetics for groundbreaking research in evolutionary genetics.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2014, Pääbo was awarded the Swedish sv:Learning Ladder Prize. In June 2015, he was awarded the degree of DSc (honoris causa) at NUI Galway.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2016,<ref name=frs>Template:Cite web One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: Template:Blockquote</ref> and in 2017, was awarded the Dan David Prize. In 2018, he received the Princess of Asturias Awards in the category of Scientific Research and the Körber European Science Prize,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> in 2020 the Japan Prize,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> in 2021 the Massry Prize<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and in 2022 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> for sequencing the first Neanderthal genome.<ref name="ReutersNobel" />

Personal life

Pääbo wrote in his 2014 book Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes that he is bisexual. He assumed he was gay until he met Linda Vigilant, an American primatologist and geneticist whose "boyish charms" attracted him. “I had many relationships with men, but I also had girlfriends now and again”. They have co-authored many papers, are married and raising a son and a daughter together in Leipzig.<ref name="Sexuality">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="PersonalLife">Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref name=lostgenomes>Template:Cite book</ref>

Distinctions

• Template:Flagicon:File:Royal Order of the Polar Star (1748-1975) - Commander Grand Cross.svg Commander Grand Cross of the Royal Order of the Polar Star (21 March 2024) (KmstkNO)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

See also

• Origins of Us (2011 BBC series)
• First Peoples (2015 PBS series)
• List of Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine
• List of Swedish Nobel laureates

External links

• Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Society
• Human Evolutionary Genomics Unit (Svante Pääbo). Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University
• Template:Google Scholar ID
• Template:Nobelprize