Studying ancient DNA will continue to reveal the genetic basis for other aspects of our physiology and, in doing so, aid medical advancements, she said. “There are a lot of implications, both in terms of understanding our evolution, potential medical implications and a basic understanding of our physiology,” said Gunilla Karlsson-Hedestam, a member of the Nobel committee, at the announcement. Pääbo’s work also supported the discovery that one gene inherited from Denisovans helps present-day Tibetans survive at high altitudes with low oxygen concentrations. As a result, people in Melanesia (a region in the South Pacific Ocean consisting of roughly 2000 islands, including New Guinea, Ghoi and Tanna) and parts of south-east Asia have up to 6 per cent Denisovan DNA. sapiens bred with Denisovans in eastern parts of Eurasia.
sapiens, he discovered an entirely new type of hominin, the Denisovans.įurther analysis revealed that H. By comparing this DNA with that of both Neanderthals and H.
In 2008, Pääbo sequenced DNA from a 40,000-year-old finger bone discovered in a cave in southern Siberia.
sapiens migrated out of Africa around 70,000 years ago.Īs a result, up to 2 per cent of the genome in people of European or Asian descent originates from Neanderthals, including genes that affect our immune response to infections. Using three Neanderthal bone specimens from Vindija cave in Croatia, along with others from Germany, Russia and Spain, Pääbo sequenced the 3 billion base pairs of the Neanderthal genome.īy comparing the Neanderthal genome with that of Homo sapiens, Pääbo revealed that these hominin groups diverged roughly 400,000 to 800,000 years ago and would have bred with each other in western Eurasia after H. What can we can learn from being the last type of human left standing?
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