Why in News

• Swedish scientist Svante Pääbo has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology for the year 2022.

What was his research based on

• Svante Pääbo sequenced the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans
• Through his groundbreaking research, Svante Pääbo established an entirely new scientific discipline- paleogenomics. Following the initial discoveries, his group has completed analyses of several additional genome sequences from extinct hominins.

Significance

• Pääbo’s discoveries have established a unique resource, which is utilized extensively by the scientific community to better understand human evolution and migration. New powerful methods for sequence analysis indicate that archaic hominins may also have mixed with Homo sapiens in Africa.
  • Thanks to Svante Pääbo’s discoveries, we now understand that archaic gene sequences from our extinct relatives influence the physiology of present-day humans. One such example is the Denisovan version of the gene EPAS1, which confers an advantage for survival at high altitude and is common among present-day Tibetans. Other examples are Neanderthal genes that affect our immune response to different types of infections.

Reference:

1. https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/medicine-nobel-goes-to-svante-p%C3%A4%C3%A4bo-for-sequencing-neanderthal-genome/article65965761.ece