Svante Paabo, a Swedish geneticist has been conferred with the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in general terms for this year.
Paabo has achieved a distinctive feat by discovering how modern-day humans evolved from extinct ancestors. Svante Paabo is the son of Sune Bergstrom, who won the Nobel prize in medicine in 1982.
He undertook the genome sequencing of Neanderthal, the ancestor species of today's humans, which has gone extinct. Apart from this, he discovered an ancestor of humans with whom we were previously unknown, from a 40,000-year-old fragment of a finger bone discovered in Siberia, which is named Denisova.
In particular, Paabo also found that due to migration from Africa 70,000 years ago, genes were transferred from extinct ancestors to present-day humans or Homo sapiens. This dissemination of genes in humans is of great importance as it determines how our immune system responds to infections.
Thomas Perlmann, secretary for the Nobel Prize Committee informed how thrilled Paabo was when he heard about this news, while Paabo received the news “He asked if he could tell anyone and asked if he could tell his wife and I said that was okay. He was incredibly thrilled about this award.”
The prize is awarded by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($900,357). Regarded as one of the most distinguished recognitions has a century-long coveted history.
The Nobel Prize is given according to the will of Swedish dynamite investor and businessman Alfred Nobel. These awards are given in the fields of scientific development, literature, and societal harmony since 1901. Nobel Prizes in the field of economics were given later.
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed medical research center 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 is usual for any research to be recognized at such a stage that takes a few years. The panel that decides on the awards will determine its full value with other contenders in the fray.
The award is this year’s first and is returning to its full glaze after the pandemic which pushed the awards to the center itself.