First solo award in 6 years… first anthropologist
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to a Swedish anthropologist who discovered the commonalities and differences between the genes of ancient and extinct modern humans.
The Nobel Committee of Karolinska Medical University in Sweden announced on the 2nd (local time) that Svante Pevo, director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, will receive the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The Nobel Committee said, “The winner identified the genetic differences that distinguish modern humans from ancient, extinct humans and established a new field of study called Paleogenomics. He has contributed greatly to the development of science and medicine for mankind by finding out what makes it.” ” The director Pevo will receive 10 million kronor (about 1.3 billion won) as a monetary award.
Pevo is known for deciphering the DNA of an extinct ‘Denisovan’ man found in a cave in Denisova, Russia in 2008. At that time, the damaged DNA extracted from the finger bones of the Denisovans was recombined. By separating the strands of the DNA helix, the amount of data that can be analyzed was doubled, and nucleotide sequences were analyzed 30 times for each part of the genome.
Director Pebo is an anthropological researcher with a medical background. This is the first time an anthropologist has won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This is the first time in six years that an individual recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been chosen since Yoshinori Osumi, a professor at the University of Tokyo in Japan in 2016. Chung-won Chung, a professor of life sciences at Seoul National University, said, “I I never thought I would receive a Nobel Prize in anthropology.
The director Pebo was also named the 7th ‘Winner of the Rich Son Award’.
Director Pebo published ‘In Search of the Lost Genome’ in 2014. It was chosen as ‘Amazon Book of the Year’ that year and was a bestseller in science in Korea. In this book, he admitted that he was out of wedlock. The 1982 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to his father, biochemist Sune Karl Beristrom. Major Pebo follows his mother’s surname.
Reporter Ko Jae-won, Dong-A Science jawon1212@donga.com
Reporter Park Jeong-yeon, Donga Science hesse@donga.com
