Archaic Genomics
The Fairfield Osborn Jr. Memorial Lecture and Postdoctoral Researchers’ Sponsored Friday Lecture
Event Details
- Type
- Friday Lecture Series
- Speaker(s)
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Svante Pääbo, Ph.D., adjunct professor, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology; director, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
- Speaker bio(s)
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Dr. Svante Pääbo will describe his group's work to sequence genomes from Neandertals as well as a previously unknown extinct Asian hominin group related to Neandertals, which we named “Denisovans”. Analyses of these genomes show that gene flow occurred among modern human ancestors and these archaic hominins. As a consequence, about 2.0% of the genomes of people living outside Africa come from Neandertals while about 5.0% of the genomes of people living in Oceania come from Denisovans. These genetic contributions have numerous physiological and medical consequences today. He will describe some such changes that influence sensitivity to pain, susceptibility to infections, and growth and development. He will also describe some changes that appeared and rose to high frequencies in modern humans since their divergence from a common ancestor shared with the archaic hominins. He will suggest that the genetic basis of the modern human phenotype is likely to be a combination of several genetic features, where not every feature is present in every present-day human.
Svante Pääbo and his research group has determined genome sequences from Neandertals and discovered Denisovans, a previously unknown hominin group in Asia. They have shown that both Neanderthals and Denisovans contributed DNA to present-day humans and that these contributions have physiological and medical consequences today.
Svante Pääbo is a Director at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and an Adjunct Professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2022.
- Open to
- Tri-Institutional