Being the son of a Nobel laureate poison sugar. First of all, if you want to devote yourself to the same thing as him. Because yes, this relationship opens doors for you, gives you an unrivaled perspective for cutting-edge research, and gives you social capital light years ahead of other mortals. However, it raises many doubts.

Svante Pääbo knew this very well when he left his hometown of Sweden on his way to California in the late 1980s. Pääbo’s father (Sune Bergström) had won the Nobel Prize in Medina in 1982 and was such a burden to the young Svante. She actually uses her mother’s surname. But in the end, everything is known. And maybe that’s why they put a hat on when he came to Allan Wilson’s lab. something that seems impossible.

history is garbage

At least that’s the impression it gives right out of the books: We’re talking about a huge, messy, crazy, meaningless dump. This was undoubtedly the first big lesson Svante learned while trying to study the DNA of Neanderthals. Then he learned more: The most important thing was that DNA was chemically altered and split into short pieces. After thousands of years, only traces of DNA remain, and what is left is heavily contaminated with DNA from bacteria and modern humans.

In the late 1980s, committing to it meant committing to something that everyone thought was impossible. A father’s way to entertain his son He said he’s reached the state-of-the-art evolutionary biology lab that will find the original Eve, the African woman from whom all the mitochondrial DNA in the world today is derived.

The problem is that Svante was passionate about it. In 1990, Pääbo was hired by the University of Munich and decided to continue his work on archaic DNA. Using what he learned in Wilson’s lab, he began analyzing the DNA of Neanderthal mitochondria. Logic stood alone: ​​it is true that the chains of this genome are small and fractional, but they have been copied thousands of times; that is, there was a greater chance of success.

30 years journey

And it was successful to everyone’s surprise. Paabo managed to rank mitochondrial DNA region 40,000-year-old bone. For the first time, we were able to access a set of extinct relatives, confirming that they were genetically distinct from both modern humans and chimpanzees. This is where the good started.

Thanks to the support of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Pääbo developed techniques for isolating and analyzing DNA from archaic bone remains. They collected all the remains they could find and brought them together with experts in population genetics and advanced sequencing. Thus, 30 years later, in 2010, Pääbo was able to publish the first sequence of the Neanderthal genome.

A few years ago, in 2008, Paääbo’s team began examining a 40,000-year-old finger bone found at Denisova, a cave in southern Siberia. The bone contained DNA so well-preserved that it opened the door to an entirely different history: the history of a humanity made up only of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. an enormous group of human species disappearing today.

Does this deserve a Nobel?

No one doubts Pääbo’s success: was able to single-handedly establish an entirely new scientific discipline, paleogenomics. But what is its real significance to people’s lives? Does he really deserve the Nobel Prize in medicine? This is the most wonderful thing.

Because, thanks to Svante Pääbo’s discoveries, we now know that the genetic sequences of our extinct relatives influenced the physiology of modern humans. An example of this is the version of the EPAS1 gene that confers a high-altitude survival advantage and is common among modern Tibetans: it comes from Denisovans; but there are many more cases that have a significant day-to-day impact.

In conclusion, Pääbo’s work shows us that there is no better way to understand our present, our physiology, the way we get sick than by analyzing what makes us human and what is hidden in the planet’s memory. Fortunately, we learned to decipher and that will change everything.

Image | Nobel Foundation