Homo sapiens received the Nobel Prize for hominids - Newspaper Kommersant No. 183 (7384) of 10/04/2022

Homo sapiens received the Nobel Prize for hominids - Newspaper Kommersant No. 183 (7384) of 10/04/2022



Swedish scientist Svante Paabo won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominids (primates) and human evolution. Mr. Paabo is famous for deciphering the DNA of a Neanderthal for the first time in history, and later proved that Neanderthals, Homo sapiens and Denisovans, in the process of migration of "intelligent people" from Africa to Eurasia, met and "entered into intimate relationships with each other." According to the Nobel Committee, the works of Svante Paabo are "widely used by the scientific community to better understand human evolution and migration." Thanks to his research, a new scientific discipline appeared - paleogenomics.

2022 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine Svante Paabo has made "impossible" discoveries in the field of the genetic basis of human evolution: he has irrefutably proved that humans are descended from monkeys. It says in the official press release Nobel Committee at Karolinska Medical Institute.

Back in the mid-seventies, at the beginning of his career, Svante Paabo wondered if it was possible to sequence, that is, sequentially decompose the DNA of extinct hominids - great apes. The task turned out to be difficult, because over time, DNA is chemically modified and breaks down into short fragments, and is also contaminated by microorganisms. It was not until 1997 that Mr. Paabo succeeded in sequencing a 40,000-year-old section of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA from a humerus. But analysis of the small mitochondrial genome provided only limited information, so Svante Paabo took on the "enormous task" of sequencing the Neanderthal nuclear genome, according to a press release. And his efforts were crowned with success: in 2010, the scientist was able to publish the first sequence of the Neanderthal genome. Comparative analysis showed that the most recent common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens lived about 800 thousand years ago. In addition, it turned out that in modern people of European or Asian origin, approximately 1-4% of the genome comes from Neanderthals, that is, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens interbred during the millennia of their coexistence.

In 2008, when a bone of an unknown hominid was found in a South Siberian cave, it was sent for sequencing, including to the Paabo team. And he found out that we have a new population. Now its representatives are called Altai people, or Denisovans (after the name of the cave where the remains were found). A press release from the Nobel Committee clarifies that Paabo's discoveries have given rise to a new understanding of evolutionary history. At the time that Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa, at least two extinct populations of hominids inhabited Eurasia: the Neanderthals lived in the western part of Eurasia, and the Denisovans lived in the eastern part. During the expansion of Homo sapiens outside Africa and migration to the east, they met and interbred not only with Neanderthals, but also with Denisovans. This connection was first discovered in the populations of Melanesia and other parts of Southeast Asia: the people inhabiting these territories carry up to 6% of Denisovan DNA.

Note that this year's award was a surprise. At least Svante Paabo did not appear on the list of Clarivate analytics, which annually ranks possible contenders for the award based on citation.

It is believed that from year to year "medical" and "physiological" bonuses alternate. In 2020, the Nobel Prize was medical: it went to Harvey Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles Rice, who independently studied the hepatitis C virus. In 2021, physiological. It was awarded to American scientists David Julius and Ardem Pataputyan "for the discovery of temperature and touch receptors." Therefore, analysts assumed that this year the prize would again be medical: either for research on the possibilities of treating neurodegenerative diseases, or for the discovery of a mutation responsible for the inheritance of breast cancer, or for achievements in the field of gene therapy for hereditary blood diseases. The Nobel Committee explained its decision by saying that Svante Paabo's discoveries "created a unique resource that is widely used by the scientific community to better understand human evolution and migration." Thanks to the work of Mr. Paabo, the press release says, humanity understands that the archaic gene sequences of our extinct relatives affect the physiology of modern people. This is, for example, the Denisovan version of the EPAS1 gene, which gives an advantage in survival at high altitude and is common among modern Tibetans. Or the Neanderthal genes that influence our immune response to various types of infections.

Varvara Bakholdina, professor at the Department of Anthropology at the Faculty of Biology at Moscow State University, agrees that Svante Paabo's research is "extremely important" for anthropology. Until now, she notes, all possible information about whether there is a relationship between the ancient groups of mankind, how similar they are, was based only on morphology, that is, on the structural features of the skull and skeleton. “Of course, this is not accurate enough data to judge genetic similarity. But the development of paleogenetics - here the contribution of this researcher can hardly be overestimated - has given anthropologists great opportunities to study the genetic relationships between different groups, ”says Ms. Bakholdina. According to her, the first studies in this direction showed "a large genetic distance." This led scientists to speculate that maybe Neanderthals are a separate species that has nothing to do with Homo sapiens. But the work of Svante Paabo proved that there was a mixture between Neanderthals and sapiens and, perhaps, these are not even different species, but different races of ancient mankind.

“This is an exit to a fundamentally different level of theoretical understanding of the relationship between representatives of ancient mankind,” states Varvara Bakholdina.

Mikhail Gelfand, vice president for biomedical research at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, emphasizes that Svante Paabo’s work is “absolutely amazing” from a technical point of view: “He learned how to work with really ancient DNA, which is preserved in very small quantities, and in this sense he made a technical breakthrough. People are already using these methods.” On the other hand, Mr. Gelfand continues, the works of the Swedish scientist are of "absolute fundamental importance" because they have seriously modified the idea of ​​human history. “Say, anthropologists argued for a long time: did Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals enter into intimate relationships or not? An analysis of the genomes showed that they undoubtedly did, and this is precisely the work of Svante Paabo,” comments Mikhail Gelfand. “It turned out that there is a whole third branch of humanity — the Denisovan man — about which we know nothing at all. That is, 50-70 thousand years ago, three independent humankinds roamed Eurasia, which at the same time interacted very actively with each other, and this in itself is interesting.”

Galina Pavlova, Head of the Department of Medical Genetics at Sechenov University, Doctor of Biology, adds that Mr. Paabo’s discoveries related to the genetic characteristics of different populations will help to better understand the mechanisms of various diseases and, accordingly, more effectively select therapy for patients in the future: “Knowing how we happened, this is the basis for understanding what to do next.”

Natalia Kostarnova



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