Exploring ancient genomes: An interview with Hypatia prize winner Svante Pääbo#
Svante Pääbo MAE reflects on his pioneering work in paleogenetics, the impact of ancient DNA on modern science, and his vision for the future of human evolutionary research.
About Svante Pääbo#
Professor Svante Pääbo is the winner of the 2024 Hypatia Prize. He is a Swedish geneticist renowned as one of the founders of paleogenetics, a field that uses DNA analysis to study ancient humans and extinct species. He has made groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of human evolution, most notably by sequencing the Neanderthal genome and discovering the Denisovans, a previously unknown group of archaic humans. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2022
, recognising his role in uncovering genetic links between modern and extinct hominins and fundamentally transforming our understanding of human evolution.
After completing postdoctoral research in Switzerland and the United States, Professor Pääbo became a professor at the University of Munich before founding the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig in 1997. He was elected to the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology section of Academia Europaea in 1998. In 2024, Pääbo was awarded the Hypatia Prize by Academia Europaea and the Barcelona City Council for, ‘Innovative work in sequencing the genomes of extinct species and populations, as well as his groundbreaking contributions to paleogenomics.’
The Hypatia Prize, established in 2018, recognises excellence in European research and reinforces Barcelona’s role as a hub of scientific knowledge.
Read the interview#
Congratulations on winning the Hypatia Prize! Given your incredible career and accolades, including the Nobel Prize, what does receiving this particular award mean to you?
“It is an honour and an encouragement to receive this prize for European science. I feel both grateful and humbled.”
You have been widely recognised as one of the founders of the field of paleogenetics. What first drew you to the study of ancient DNA?
Your work has not only rewritten human history but also contributed to medicine, such as linking Neanderthal genes to COVID-19 susceptibility. How do you see ancient DNA research continuing to impact modern health sciences?
Another exciting development is that several labs are now generating genomes from humans who lived at various times over the past 10,000 years. So, we can begin to follow the frequency of genetic variants over time to see if, and when, they have increased or decreased in the past. This will allow us to correlate changes in the frequency of genetic variants with past epidemics, environmental changes, the introduction of agriculture and other important events in our history.”
What motivates you at this stage in your career? And what do you hope your legacy in science will be?
I hope that the genomes of Neanderthals and Denisovans will remain a valuable resource for researchers, but of course others will produce more and even better genomes in the future.”
.For further information please contact AECardiffHub@cardiff.ac.uk
.
