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Svante Pääbo
Director, Department of Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany |
Svante Pääbo first gained public acclaim for reference work on the analysis of DNA from archeological samples. Retrospectively, applying the use of modern DNA amplification techniques to ancient DNA might seem like an obvious way to open windows on our ancestral history and reveal the long hidden secrets of human divergence from the apes. Yet Svante Pääbo was the first person to show that it could be done. His undergraduate education at the University of Uppsala was broad, covering subjects ranging from Egyptology and Russian to molecular virology and medical studies. His doctoral studies, based on his successful isolation of DNA in samples taken from Egyptian mummies in museums, were published in Nature. In the 20 years since that ground-breaking study, he has published over 170 papers and used similar techniques to carry out analyses of Neanderthal and Ape genomes. He has worked in Zürich, London, California and Uppsala, and since 1997 directs the multidisciplinary Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzeig. At the age of 50, is now regarded as the founding father of paleogenetics, the application of genetics to paleontology. Svante Pääbo is currently using comparative genomics, another recent addition to the branching tree of knowledge, to obtain a wide-angle view of species divergence patterns. Research in his laboratory has most recently focused on cross-species comparison of brain-specific gene expression patterns and on the evolution of genes associated with the capacity for human speech. Svante Pääbo has acquired a distinguished record of service on scientific editorial boards and policy-making review committees, but continues to uncover rich new seams of knowledge confluence at a prolific rate. He is the recipient of many academic prizes and honors, including the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine, 2005. |
