Stockholm: Nobel Prize for this year in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Svante Pääbo for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution. The prize was awarded to him on Monday. Notably, the award in medicine kicks off a week of Nobel Prize announcements. The award announcement will continue on Tuesday with the physics prize, with chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. And, the Nobel Peace Prize 2022 will be announced on Friday and the economics award on October 10.Also Read – Nobel Prize in Medicine 2019: Discoveries That Won The Award
It must be noted that the Nobel price carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000) and will be handed out on December. 10. Also Read – Monkey menace in Vrindaban
BREAKING NEWS:
The 2022 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Svante Pääbo “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.” pic.twitter.com/fGFYYnCO6J— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 3, 2022
Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Committee, announced the winner of the prize on Monday at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
Last year’s recipients were David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries into how the human body perceives temperature and touch.
The novel prize was given to Pääbo as he sequenced the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans. Svante Pääbo made the sensational discovery of a previously unknown hominin, Denisova.
“Pääbo also found that gene transfer had occurred from these now extinct hominins to Homo sapiens following the migration out of Africa around 70,000 years ago. This ancient flow of genes to present-day humans has physiological relevance today, for example affecting how our immune system reacts to infections. Pääbo’s seminal research gave rise to an entirely new scientific discipline; paleogenomics,” the Nobel announcement stated.
It must also be noted that a total of 112 Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine have been awarded between 1901 and 2021, of which only 12 have been women.
Who is Svante Pääbo?
Svante Pääbo is the Director of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. The nobel prize comes with a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (over $1.14 million) and the award money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.