[csusbpeace] Swedish geneticist wins Nobel medicine prize for decoding ancient DNA

From: "raccoon" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ("bigraccoon1")
To: "CSUSBPEACE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <CSUSBPEACE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2022 06:42:46 -0700

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Swedish geneticist wins Nobel medicine prize for decoding ancient DNA

STOCKHOLM/LONDON, Oct 3 (Reuters) -

Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine on Monday for discoveries that underpin our understanding of how
modern day people evolved from extinct ancestors at the dawn of human history.

Paabo's work demonstrated practical implications during the COVID-19 pandemic
when he found that people infected with the virus who carry a gene variant
inherited from Neanderthals are more at risk of severe illness than whose who
do not.

Paabo, director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in
Leipzig, Germany, won the prize for "discoveries concerning the genomes of
extinct hominins and human evolution," the Award committee said.

"The thing that's amazing to me is that you now have some ability to go back
in time and actually follow genetic history and genetic changes over time,"
Paabo told a news conference at the Max Planck Institute. "It's a possibility
to begin to actually look on evolution in real time, if you like."

Paabo, 67, said he thought the call from Sweden was a prank or something to
do with his summer house there.

"So I was just gulping down the last cup of tea to go and pick up my daughter
at her nanny where she has had an overnight stay," Paabo said in a recording
posted on the Nobel website.

"And then I got this call from Sweden and I of course thought it had
something to do with our little summer house ... I thought the lawn mower had
broken down or something."

Asked if he thought he would get the award, he said: "No, I have received a
couple of prizes before but I somehow did not think that this really would
qualify for a Nobel Prize."

Paabo, son of a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist, has been credited with
transforming the study of human origins after developing ways to allow for
the examination of DNA sequences from archaeological and paleontological
remains.

Not only did he help uncover the existence of a previously unknown human
species called the Denisovans, from a 40,000-year-old fragment of a finger
bone discovered in Siberia, his crowning achievement is considered to be the
methods developed to allow for the sequencing of an entire Neanderthal genome.

'GENETIC DIFFERENCES'

This research, which showed that certain genes of Neanderthal origin are
preserved in the genomes of people today, was once considered impossible,
given that Neanderthal DNA on bones has shrivelled up over thousands of years
into short fragments that have to be assembled like a gigantic puzzle, and
are also heavily contaminated with microbial DNA.

"This ancient flow of genes to present-day humans has physiological relevance
today, for example affecting how our immune system reacts to infections," the
Nobel Committee said.

The prize, among the most prestigious in the scientific world, is awarded by
the Nobel Assembly of Sweden's Karolinska Institute and is worth 10 million
Swedish crowns ($900,357).

Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo, who won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine for discoveries that underpin our understanding of how modern day
humans evolved from extinct ancestors, holds on to a life-saver after being
thrown into the water by co-workers, at the Max-Planck Institute for
evolutionary anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, October 3, 2022. REUTERS/Lisi
Niesner

It is the first of this year's batch of prizes.

Born in Stockholm, Paabo studied medicine and biochemistry at Uppsala
University before creating a scientific discipline called "paleogenomics",
which helped show genetic differences that distinguish living humans from
extinct hominins.

"His discoveries provide the basis for exploring what makes us uniquely
human," the Committee said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed medical research centre stage, 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 honoured,
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.

PANDEMIC

When asked why the prize did not go to advances in combating COVID, Thomas
Perlmann, secretary for the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, said
the committee would only talk about prize winners, not those who had not won,
or had not yet won.

However, Paabo's ancient forensics work did offer insight on why some people
are at higher risk of severe COVID.

In 2020, a report <https://www.mpg.de/15451493/neandertal-genes-covid19> from
Paabo and colleagues 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.

"We can make an average gauge of the number of the extra deaths we have had
in the pandemic due to the contribution from the Neanderthals. It is quite
substantial, it's more than one million extra individuals who have died due
to this Neanderthal variant that they carry," Paabo said in 2022 lecture.

Paabo's most cited paper in the Web of Science was published in 1989, with
4,077 citations, said David Pendlebury, from UK-based scientific data
analytics provider Clarivate.

"Only some 2,000 papers out of 55 million published since 1970 have been
cited this many times," he said.

"It is, however, not an award for a discovery relevant to clinical medicine,
which many anticipated this year after a Nobel Prize focusing on physiology
last year."

Past winners in the field include a string of famous researchers, notably
Alexander Fleming, who shared the 1945 prize for the discovery of penicillin,
and Robert Koch, who won already in 1905 for his investigations of
tuberculosis.

[csusbpeace] Swedish geneticist wins Nobel medicine prize for decoding ancient DNA

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