Nobel medicine prize goes to explorer of ancient DNA
STORY: Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday.
The 67 year-old won for discoveries that underpin our understanding of how modern day humans evolved from extinct ancestors.
Paabo is director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Thomas Perlmann, secretary for the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, delivered the news by phone.
"He was overwhelmed, he was speechless and very happy and asked if he could tell anyone and asked if he could tell his wife and I said that was ok."
Paabo, the son of a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist, has been credited with transforming the study of human origins.
He developed ways to allow for the examination of DNA sequences from archaeological and paleontological remains, reaching back to the dawn of human history.
His crowning achievement is considered to be the methods he developed to allow for the sequencing of an entire Neanderthal genome.
This research, once considered impossible, showed that certain genes of Neanderthal origin are preserved in the genomes of people today.
The prize, among the most prestigious in the scientific world, is awarded by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden's Karolinska Institute and is worth just over $900,00.
