Nobel Prize 2022 for Leipzig researchers Svante Pääbo

The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine is going to Svante Pääbo this year. One of its most important scientific success is the decryption of the Neanderthal genome. For example, Svante Pääbo has proven that Neanderthals and other extinct hominids have made a significant contribution to the descent of today's people.

director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

svante Pääbo, studied Egyptology and Medicine at the University of Uppsala. As a doctoral student - he did his doctorate in immunology - he also demonstrated that DNA can survive in ancient Egyptian mummies, and thus gained professional fame as a pioneer of the new research area of paleogenicetics. Paleogenistic research the genomes of ancient organisms and draw conclusions about the course of evolution. After his doctorate, Pääbo worked in the team of the evolutionary biologist Allan Wilson at the University of California in Berkeley. From 1990 he headed his own laboratory at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. In 1997 Pääbo, as one of five directors, switched to the newly founded Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, where he still works.

decryption of the Neanderthal DNA

As early as the mid-1990s, Pääbo and his team were able to decipher a relatively short part of the mitochondria DNA of a Neanderthal. Mitochondria are tiny power plants in cells that supply them with energy and have their own DNA. This DNA of the Neanderthals differed significantly from the genome of today's people. This proved that Neanderthals are not the direct ancestors of current people. 

Since the DNA sequencing methods became much more efficient in the early 2000s, Pääbo began to sequence the complete genome of the Neanderthals, which is present in the cell nucleus.

Mayor Burkhard Jung to award the Nobel Prize

For the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Medicine to Svante Pääbo, Mayor Burkhard Jung:

“Svant Pääbo is a gifted scientist who has worked meticulously and determined for decades. He has put a discipline into focus that has so far only said something very few. of our heirs.

svante Pääbo was in 2003 with the Science Award of Leipzig and the University of Leipzig and the Saxon Academy of Sciences .