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. He was appointed director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany in 1997. 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 August 2002, Pääbo's 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" magazine's 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. The discovery of the Denisovan was the first time a previously unknown hominin was discovered by means of DNA analysis. 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. 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 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 his thoughts on human evolution. 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. , Pääbo has an h-index of 162 according to Google Scholar and of 127 according to Scopus . 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, in 2020 the Japan Prize and in 2021 the Massry Prize . Personal life. In Pääbo's 2014 book "", he stated that he 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.