Svante Pääbo is credited with rewriting the story of humanity by accomplishing what was once deemed impossible – sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal through the extraction of ancient DNA. He spawned the scientific field of paleogenetics, and has revolutionised our understanding of the past with his discovery of a previously unknown hominin (the term refers to modern and extinct humans, as well as our immediate ancestors), Denisova, and establishing that gene transfer between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had taken place about 70,000 years ago.
One of the first of many surprises in his research was to find out that the genetic differences between Neanderthals and all modern humans (amounting to about 30,000) are far less than the differences between two random human beings alive today – around 3 million. “Our job is to find out which of those 30,000 are most important, because they tell us what makes us uniquely human,” he says.
At least half of the Neanderthal genome – probably as much as 60 to 70% of it, Pääbo believes – is to be found in living humans. “Which means that in effect Neanderthals are not really extinct at all, they are in us.”
The information he and his team has retrieved gives us a whole new reference point for understanding our evolution, which potentially has a multitude of benefits “including enabling a greater understanding as to what makes us uniquely human and how evolution influences our biology today,” he says.
It was a shock, Pääbo stresses, to discover that people who have inherited a certain Neanderthal chromosome variant, were twice as likely to die of Covid if infected. “Based on the official coronavirus mortality statistics and the prevalence of the risk variant, we can estimate that this Neanderthal variant is responsible for 1.1 million extra coronavirus deaths,” he says. The variant is most commonly found in southern Asia.
Another surprising discovery relates to pain perception. Using data from the UK’s biobank – the world’s largest biomedical database which contains the genetic information of around half a million of the country’s citizens – Pääbo was able to establish that people with a specific Neanderthal variant are more likely to feel pain and to therefore age quicker. “It’s maybe time to rethink our idea of Neanderthals as brutish individuals,” Pääbo quips. “Maybe they were actually quite sensitive.”
@theGrauniad
One of the first of many surprises in his research was to find out that the genetic differences between Neanderthals and all modern humans (amounting to about 30,000) are far less than the differences between two random human beings alive today – around 3 million. “Our job is to find out which of those 30,000 are most important, because they tell us what makes us uniquely human,” he says.
At least half of the Neanderthal genome – probably as much as 60 to 70% of it, Pääbo believes – is to be found in living humans. “Which means that in effect Neanderthals are not really extinct at all, they are in us.”
The information he and his team has retrieved gives us a whole new reference point for understanding our evolution, which potentially has a multitude of benefits “including enabling a greater understanding as to what makes us uniquely human and how evolution influences our biology today,” he says.
It was a shock, Pääbo stresses, to discover that people who have inherited a certain Neanderthal chromosome variant, were twice as likely to die of Covid if infected. “Based on the official coronavirus mortality statistics and the prevalence of the risk variant, we can estimate that this Neanderthal variant is responsible for 1.1 million extra coronavirus deaths,” he says. The variant is most commonly found in southern Asia.
Another surprising discovery relates to pain perception. Using data from the UK’s biobank – the world’s largest biomedical database which contains the genetic information of around half a million of the country’s citizens – Pääbo was able to establish that people with a specific Neanderthal variant are more likely to feel pain and to therefore age quicker. “It’s maybe time to rethink our idea of Neanderthals as brutish individuals,” Pääbo quips. “Maybe they were actually quite sensitive.”
@theGrauniad
