Dr. Svante Pääbo, founder of an entire scientific discipline

This year, surprisingly, the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to the Swedish biologist Svante Pääbo “for his discoveries on the genomes of extinct hominids and human evolution.” The area of ​​anthropology had never been taken into account for this award, which shows how science is also being revolutionized and interdiscipline is growing in all fields of knowledge.

In this regard, Dr. Alejandro Terrazas, senior researcher at the UNAM Anthropological Research Institute, told El Economista that it was definitely a surprise because medicine and physiology awards are generally focused on health directly, “this award is surprising, but yes it is very deserved because not every day we are going to find a person who is the founder of an entire scientific discipline”.

This is much to Dr. Pääbo’s credit, for he practically disobeyed his boss, as he had been asked to pursue other matters, and in general no one in the genetics community believed that DNA could be preserved in ancient fossils. “Although he developed other topics, in parallel he continued to develop the technique to extract ancient DNA. Through this discipline, it has definitely revolutionized several fields, including anthropology”, Dr. Terrazas’ subject of expertise, and where specifically in physical anthropology the relationship between culture, the biology of the human being is studied, and how this has evolved.

He shares that when they began to see his Neanderthal publications “it was incredible”, then the Denisovans and then the complete genome sequencing that requires incredible laboratory capacity, computers and very advanced equipment, for example in Mexico there is little capacity to do genomics and practically none of them are dedicated to obtaining genomes from fossils.

paleogenomics and medicine

The paleoanthropologist and prehistorian explains that it would seem that paleogenomics was going to have a much more academic interest and not so practical or applied, however they began to find some extremely surprising factors.

When they begin to realize (Dr. Pääbo and his team) that some Neanderthal genes appeared in the modern human genome, that is, in our own species, this meant that at some point the Neanderthals and the first Homo sapiens that came out from Africa came together.

“Our species, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa, the Neanderthals in Europe. They were separated for at least 500,000 years, suddenly 100,000 years ago Homo sapiens comes out and meets Neanderthals in the Near East and there instead of the traditional violent war view that says that humans saw and exterminated Neanderthals , instead they mated and had offspring, that’s us.”

Dr. Terrazas explains that each of us has up to 2% Neanderthal DNA and this was one of the great discoveries of Dr. Pääbo and some other researchers. These genes are also useful for something, for example, greater resistance to cold climates, others are also neutral and others negative. This is where the field of medicine comes in, understanding why our immune system, our physiology and metabolism is the way it is and the result of an evolutionary product.

With this we can see the history of these defenses against diseases and this begins to have relevance for health, because different medical therapies can be designed for different populations according to their differential inheritance. “All this paleogenomics from Dr. Pääbo is revolutionizing the way we can design treatments and that’s why it fits in the area of ​​medicine.”

Increasingly united areas

The archaeologist also reflects that for the first time anthropology occupies this place that is not part of the Nobel Prizes. “With this we realize that trans- and interdiscipline are increasingly valuable, and that chemistry alone cannot make great advances, it requires physics, physiology, medicine, genetics and even paleontology.”

Share that it is interesting as before fields so separated from each other, today definitively only with the collaboration they have important progress. “Dr. Pääbo knew how to work as a team and share that is something super remarkable.”

For example, in Mexico we cannot do paleogenomics, “it would be a field that we should develop, but today the big banks of the first world have made their databases more accessible. The entire genome of the sequenced Neanderthals is accessible on the internet, they are DNA libraries, thanks to this countries like ours can be incorporated in a simpler way to the advancement of knowledge”.

For example, today a student of Dr. Terrazas is studying the genetic load of schizophrenia, a multi-causal disease, but part of the component is genetic. “It seems that this comes from hybridization with Neanderthals, so from UNAM the evolution of schizophrenia is studied. We would never have imagined, we are living in a very exciting time for anthropology, medicine and for all of humanity thanks to the pioneering work of Dr. Pääbo”.

Science has to eliminate the colonialist vision

Dr. Terrazas emphasizes that fossils will continue to revolutionize, however there is an imbalance, because on the one hand the fossils are in underdeveloped countries, but the resources are in the first world. “Sometimes it is very easy to get to the third world, trick an archaeologist into giving you samples of fossils, you take them back to your country and publish them yourself. There is a danger of this happening, a colonialist vision.”

Dr. Pääbo is now retired, but what his work teams must understand is the wide-open collaboration with the countries that have the fossils. For example, in Mexico, in the laboratory of Dr. Terrazas, the oldest skeletons of the American continent were studied at the time, 13,000 years old, which although they are not compared to Neanderthals, are of great importance to understand the original settlement.

Today we still know very little about the origin of the first Native Americans, we know that they must have come from Asia, that there were several migratory waves, but more importantly, the adaptation and what it implied genetically, that means a lot to work and develop, and genetics It would shed a lot of light, which could shed information for health policies.

Dr. Concludes that they want equal treatment and that students from third world universities go to the big universities, learn the technique and return to the country to develop it. But now it no longer depends on Dr. Pääbo, but on his successors, that there be a decolonization of anthropology that benefits all humanity. The researcher in this sense is optimistic and assures that it is a very positive proposal, trying to get 100% of humanity to participate in science.

nelly.toche@eleconomista.mx