What organization did Svante Pääbo join in 1998?
Svante Pääbo Svante Pääbo ( ; born 20 April 1955 ) is a Swedish geneticist specialising in the field of evolutionary genetics . As one of the founders of paleogenetics , he has worked extensively on the neanderthal genome . Education and early life . Pääbo was born in Stockholm and grew up with his mother , Estonian chemist Karin Pääbo . His father was biochemist Sune Bergström , who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Bengt I . Samuelsson and John R . Vane in 1982 . He earned his PhD from Uppsala University in 1986 for research investigating how the E19 protein of adenoviruses modulates the immune system . Research and career . Pääbo is known as one of the founders of paleogenetics , a discipline that uses the methods of genetics to study early humans and other ancient populations . In 1997 , Pääbo and colleagues reported their successful sequencing of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA ( mtDNA ) , originating from a specimen found in Feldhofer grotto in the Neander valley . In 2020 , Pääbo determined that more severe impacts upon victims including the relative incidence of the necessity of hospitalization requirements , and vulnerability to the COVID-19 disease has been associated via DNA analysis to be expressed in genetic variants at chromosomal region 3 , features that are associated with European Neanderthal heritage . That structure imposes greater risks that those affected will develop a more severe form of the disease . The findings are from Pääbo and researchers he leads at the Planck Institute and the Karolinska Institutet . This admixture of modern human and Neanderthal genes is estimated to have occurred roughly between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago in Southern Europe . In August 2002 , Pääbos department published findings about the language gene , FOXP2 , which is lacking or damaged in some individuals with language disabilities . In 2006 , Pääbo announced a plan to reconstruct the entire genome of Neanderthals . In 2007 , he was named one of Time magazines 100 most influential people of the year . In February 2009 , at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science ( AAAS ) in Chicago , it was announced that the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology had completed the first draft version of the Neanderthal genome . Over 3 billion base pairs were sequenced in collaboration with the 454 Life Sciences Corporation . This project , led by Pääbo , will shed new light on the recent evolutionary history of modern humans . In March 2010 , Pääbo and his coworkers published a report about the DNA analysis of a finger bone found in the Denisova Cave in Siberia ; the results suggest that the bone belonged to an extinct member of the genus Homo that had not yet been recognized , the Denisova hominin . In May 2010 , Pääbo and his colleagues published a draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome in the journal Science . He and his team also concluded that there was probably interbreeding between Neanderthals and Eurasian ( but not Sub-Saharan African ) humans . There is growing support in the scientific community for this theory of admixture between archaic and anatomically-modern humans , though some archaeologists remain skeptical about this conclusion . In 2014 , he published the book where he in the mixed form of a memoir and popular science tells the story of the research effort to map the Neanderthal genome combined with thought on human evolution . Awards and honours . In 1992 , he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft , which is the highest honour awarded in German research . Pääbo was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2000 . In 2005 , he received the prestigious Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine . In 2008 , Pääbo received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement . In October 2009 , the Foundation For the Future announced that Pääbo had been awarded the 2009 Kistler Prize for his work isolating and sequencing ancient DNA , beginning in 1984 with a 2,400-year-old mummy . In June 2010 , the Federation of European Biochemical Societies ( FEBS ) awarded him the Theodor Bücher Medal for outstanding achievements in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology . In 2013 , he received Gruber Prize in Genetics for ground breaking research in evolutionary genetics . In June 2015 , he was awarded the degree of DSc ( honoris causa ) at NUI Galway . He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2016 , and in 2017 , was awarded the Dan David Prize . In 2018 , he received the Princess of Asturias Awards in the category of Scientific Research and in 2020 , the Japan Prize . Personal life . According to Neanderthal Man : In Search of Lost Genomes , Pääbo is openly bisexual – he assumed he was gay until he met Linda Vigilant , an American primatologist and geneticist whose boyish charms attracted him . They have co-authored many papers . They are married and raising a son and a daughter together in Leipzig .