Svante Pääbo facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Svante Pääbo
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Pääbo in 2016
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| Born | 20 April 1955 Stockholm, Sweden
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| Education | Uppsala University (PhD) |
| Known for | Paleogenetics |
| Spouse(s) |
Linda Vigilant
(m. 2008) |
| Children | 2 |
| Relatives | Sune Bergström (father) |
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| Thesis | How the E19 Protein of Adenoviruses Modulates the Immune System (1986) |
Svante Pääbo (born 20 April 1955) is a Swedish geneticist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2022. He is a founder of paleogenetics, which is the study of ancient DNA. He is famous for his work on the Neanderthal genome.
Pääbo became the first director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, in 1997. He also teaches at Leipzig University and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan.
In 2022, he received the Nobel Prize for his amazing discoveries. These discoveries are about the genes of ancient human relatives and how humans have changed over time.
Contents
Early Life and School
Svante Pääbo was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1955. He grew up there with his mother, Karin Pääbo. She was an Estonian chemist who came to Sweden as a refugee during World War II.
His father was Sune Bergström, a Swedish biochemist. Like Svante, his father also won a Nobel Prize in 1982. Svante is his mother's only child. He has a half-brother through his father's marriage.
Pääbo speaks Swedish as his first language. He once said he feels Swedish but has a special connection to Estonia.
In 1975, Pääbo started studying at Uppsala University. He also spent a year in the Swedish military. In 1986, he earned his Ph.D. from Uppsala University. His research looked at how a protein from adenoviruses affects the immune system.
Discoveries and Career
Pääbo is known for helping to create paleogenetics. This is a field that uses genetics to study early humans and other ancient living things.
From 1986 to 1987, he worked as a researcher at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. In 1987, he moved to the United States. He joined Allan Wilson's lab at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he studied the genes of extinct mammals.
In 1990, he returned to Europe to become a professor at the University of Munich. In 1997, he became the first director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Studying Neanderthal DNA
In 1997, Pääbo and his team successfully sequenced the DNA from the mitochondria of a Neanderthal. This DNA came from a bone found in the Neander valley. This was a big step in understanding our ancient relatives.
In 2006, Pääbo announced a big plan. He wanted to reconstruct the entire set of genes (the genome) of Neanderthals. In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people.
By February 2009, his team at the Max Planck Institute had finished the first draft of the Neanderthal genome. They sequenced over 3 billion base pairs of DNA.
Discovering Denisovans
In March 2010, Pääbo and his co-workers published an important report. They analyzed DNA from a finger bone found in the Denisova Cave in Siberia. The results showed that the bone belonged to a new, unknown group of ancient humans. This group is now called the Denisova hominin.
Pääbo's student, Viviane Slon, later mapped the Denisovan genome. This helped scientists understand where Denisovans lived and how they mixed with other ancient humans.
Modern Human and Neanderthal Connections
In May 2010, Pääbo and his team published a draft of the Neanderthal genome in the journal Science. They also found that Neanderthals and early modern humans in Eurasia likely had children together. This mixing of genes is thought to have happened about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago in the Middle East.
In 2014, Pääbo wrote a book called Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes. In this book, he shared the story of mapping the Neanderthal genome. He also shared his thoughts on how humans have evolved.
In 2020, Pääbo and Hugo Zeberg found something interesting about COVID-19. They discovered that some genes from Neanderthal heritage might make people more likely to get very sick from the disease. These genes are found on chromosome 3.
Awards and Honors
Svante Pääbo has received many important awards for his work.
- In 1992, he won the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. This is the highest honor for research in Germany.
- He became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2000.
- In 2005, he received the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine.
- In 2009, he was given the Kistler Prize for his work on ancient DNA.
- In 2013, he received the Gruber Prize in Genetics for his groundbreaking research in how living things change over time.
- He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2016.
- In 2018, he received the Princess of Asturias Awards for Scientific Research.
- In 2020, he won the Japan Prize.
- In 2022, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This was for his work on sequencing the first Neanderthal genome.
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
