Svante Pääbo
Geneticist and palaeogenomics researcher
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Germany
Svante Pääbo is a researcher affiliated with Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. This profile connects verified scholarly identity information and publication records from OpenAlex and DOI sources. Research areas include Forensic and Genetic Research, Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology, Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies, Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies, Archaeology and ancient environmental studies.
Read biography ↓Biography, research & contributions
Research profile
Svante Pääbo is a geneticist whose research helped establish the study of ancient genomes. He received the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries concerning extinct hominins and human evolution. His work made DNA from ancient remains a source of evidence about relationships among human populations and their extinct relatives.
Why ancient DNA is difficult
Ancient DNA is fragmented, chemically altered and vulnerable to contamination. Recovering useful sequences requires methods that distinguish genuine ancient material from later DNA and other sources of error. Pääbo’s programme combined advances in laboratory methods with comparative analysis, allowing increasingly informative studies of Neanderthal and Denisovan remains.
Neanderthals, Denisovans and human history
His team’s work on the Neanderthal genome provided evidence of genetic exchange with ancestors of present-day humans. DNA recovered from a small bone fragment from Denisova Cave revealed another hominin group. These discoveries showed that genetic evidence could identify relationships that were difficult to establish from the available skeletal material alone.
Selected reading
The 2022 Nobel press release is a useful introduction, while the advanced background traces the major studies and their methods. Read the studies in sequence to understand how better preservation, laboratory procedures and sequencing changed the questions researchers could answer. The discoveries concern population history and ancestry; they should not be reduced to simplistic rankings of present-day human groups.
At a glance
- Full name
- Svante Pääbo
- Fields
- Biology, Genetics
- ORCID
- https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4670-6311
- OpenAlex ID
- A5012216367
Research interests
- Ancient DNA
- Palaeogenomics
- Neanderthal genomes
- Denisovans
- Human evolution
Research topics
Education
Not yet documented in this profile.
Selected research & further reading
A curated reading list, not a ranking by citation count. References use DOI metadata, matching public scholarly records or authoritative lecture sources.
- A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome ↗2010 · ScienceDOI: 10.1126/science.1188021
Citation & publication trends
Annual counts are not yet available from a verified author record. Explore the research guide above for the work itself; publication and citation totals depend on database coverage.
Most-cited linked publications
- A high-coverage genome from a 200,000-year-old Denisovan2025-10-20 · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)9record citations
- The evolution of gene regulation in mammalian cerebellum development2026-01-29 · Science7record citations
- The activity and expression of adenylosuccinate lyase were reduced during modern human evolution, affecting brain and behavior2025-08-04 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences2record citations
- Genetic diversity of late Neanderthals in northwestern Europe2026-06-24 · Nature1record citations
- Increased signaling of the Neanderthal growth hormone receptor2026-08-01 · Current Biology1record citations
Recent linked publications
- A Method to Analyze Low-Quality Archaic Human Genomes and its Application to the Teshik-Tash 1 Neandertal2026-08-14 · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
- Increased signaling of the Neanderthal growth hormone receptor2026-08-01 · Current Biology
- Genetic diversity of late Neanderthals in northwestern Europe2026-06-24 · Nature
- Regulation of NAT1 activity in modern humans by a novel phosphorylation site2026-06-05 · Science Advances
- Data for Regulation of NAT1 activity in modern humans by a novel phosphorylation site2026-04-23 · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Journals published in
- Current Biology
- Nature
- Nature Communications
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Science
- Science Advances
Related publishers
Institutions
Current verified institution
No verified record links added yet.
Previous institutions
No verified record links added yet.
Awards & honors
- 2022 — Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Career timeline
- 2022 — Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Co-authors
No verified record links added yet.
Education & career institution links
No verified record links added yet.
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Sign in to claim this profileSources & data information
Editorial review: 2026-10-03 · Last data update: 2026-10-03
- https://openalex.org/A5012216367
- https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2022/press-release/
- https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2022/advanced-information/
Unknown values are left blank. Linked publications may be a subset of total works. Identity verification, data retrieval and profile ownership are separate checks.
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