“우리 안에 네안데르탈인 DNA 있다” 인류 진화과정 밝혀내
- 스웨덴의 유전학자 스반테 페보(67세 - Svante Pääbo / Swidish geneticist)
2022 노벨 생리의학상
안준용 기자 입력 2022.10.04 03:00 조선일보 2022년 노벨 생리의학상 수상자 스반테 페보./EPA 연합뉴스 올해 노벨 생리의학상은 네안데르탈인 등 멸종된 고대 인류의 게놈(유전자 정보)을 해독한 스웨덴의 유전학자 스반테 페보(67세 - Svante Pääbo / Swidish genetisist)에게 돌아갔다. 3일(현지 시각) 스웨덴 왕립 카롤린스카 연구소 노벨위원회는 “인류 진화 부문 연구 공로를 인정해 독일 막스플랑크 진화인류학연구소 소속 스반테 페보 박사에게 노벨 생리의학상을 수여한다”며 “그는 현대인과 과거 멸종된 고대인을 구별하는 유전적 차이를 규명했으며, 원시 게놈학이란 새로운 학문 분야를 확립했다”고 밝혔다. 페보의 부친은 1982년 생물학적 활성 물질 연구로 노벨 생리의학상을 받은 스웨덴 생화학자 수네 베리스트룀이고, 모친은 에스토니아 출신 화학자 카린 페보다. 아버지에 이어 40년 만에 아들이 노벨 생리의학상을 받게 된 것이다. 노벨상 역사상 일곱 번째 부자(父子) 수상이다. 페보는 유전학을 통해 고인류를 연구하는 고(古)유전학 창시자 가운데 1명으로 평가받는다. 특히 진화유전학을 연구하면서 2009년 네안데르탈인 게놈 전체를 최초로 해독, 현대인의 유전체에 네안데르탈인의 DNA가 섞여 있다는 것을 증명했다. 또 2010년 시베리아 남부 데니소바 동굴에서 발견된 손가락 뼈에서 추출한 DNA 분석 결과를 발표했다. 그 결과 지금까지 발표된 적 없는 또 다른 ‘멸종 고인류’라는 것이 밝혀졌고, ‘데니소바인’으로 명명됐다. 그는 2007년 타임지 ‘세계에서 가장 영향력 있는 100명’에 선정됐다. 김성수 경희대 의학전문대학원 교수는 “그는 네안데르탈인 등에게서 온 유전자가 현생 인류의 만성 질환에 영향을 미친다는 사실도 밝혀냈다”고 했다. 이번 노벨 생리의학상 수상 후보로 코로나 mRNA 백신 개발에 기여한 과학자들도 거론됐지만, 작년에 이어 올해도 수상이 불발됐다. 올해 노벨상은 이날 의학상을 시작으로 4일 물리학상, 5일 화학상, 6일 문학상, 7일 평화상, 10일 경제학상 수상자가 발표된다. 수상자에게는 상금 1000만크로나(약 13억원)가 지급된다. 시상식은 노벨의 기일인 12월 10일을 낀 ‘노벨 주간’에 스웨덴 스톡홀름에서 열린다. 코로나로 인해 온라인 행사로 대체됐던 2020년과 2021년 수상자들도 함께 참석할 예정이다. |
Svante Pääbo
Swedish evolutionary geneticist
By John P. Rafferty See All • Last Updated: Oct 3, 2022 Yahoo
Born: April 20, 1955 (age 67) Stockholm Sweden
Awards And Honors: Nobel Prize
Notable Family Members: father Sune K. Bergström
Subjects Of Study: Neanderthal
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Svante Pääbo, (born April 20, 1955, Stockholm, Sweden), Swedish evolutionary geneticist who specialized in the study of DNA from ancient specimens and who was the first to contribute to the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome. Pääbo also discovered the hominin Denisova. For his groundbreaking research on hominin genomes and human evolution, Pääbo was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
Pääbo’s parents were scientists, his mother being a chemist and his father, biochemist Sune K. Bergström, having won a share of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Pääbo pursed his own career in the sciences, enrolling at Uppsala University in 1975 for studies in humanities and, later, medicine. In 1981 he joined the Department of Cell Research at Uppsala for graduate studies; his research project centred on elucidating the effects on the immune system of E19, a protein produced by infectious adenoviruses. In 1986, after earning a Ph.D. from Uppsala, he went on for postdoctoral studies, first at the Institute for Molecular Biology II at the University of Zürich and subsequently at the Department of Biochemistry of the University of California at Berkeley. He later served as a professor of biology at the University of Munich and in 1997 was made the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. He later also joined the faculty at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan.
Early in his career Pääbo became interested in the possibility of gathering DNA from ancient human remains. He showed that cell nuclei that remained intact in the tissues of Egyptian mummies still contained DNA sequences. After developing techniques to extract and copy DNA from a sample, he determined that New Zealand’s extinct moas and Australia’s emus were more closely related than moas were to kiwis.
Pääbo’s most notable discoveries, however, came after he used DNA extraction and sequencing to examine the relationships between modern and archaic humans. He was the first to sequence a portion of the Neanderthal genome from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), the results of which revealed that humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis) are distinct species that diverged from one another by about 500,000 years ago. Pääbo later sequenced the entire Neanderthal genome, which, when compared with the modern human genome, showed an overlap of up to 4 percent with the genome of people of European and Asian descent. This discovery supported the notion that the two species interbred.
Pääbo also sequenced the mtDNA taken from a 40,000-year-old finger bone discovered at the Denisova Cave in Russia. The sequence was so unique that it revealed the presence of a previously unknown hominin species, the Denisovans, who existed simultaneously with humans and Neanderthals. All three species bred with one another, and modern Southeast Asian and Melanesian peoples shared up to 6 percent of their DNA with the Denisovans. Pääbo’s work helped to establish the modern discipline of paleogenomics, in which the genomes of living species and the preserved remains of their extinct ancestors are used to reconstruct how species and populations evolve across time.
Pääbo received numerous honours and awards throughout his career for his discoveries, including, in addition to the 2022 Nobel Prize, the Genetics Prize of the Gruber Foundation (2013), the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2016), and the Linnean Society of London’s Darwin-Wallace Medal (2019). In 2007 Pääbo was included among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. He also became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2000) and a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences (2004) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011).
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