Author: Zhang Tiankan
On October 3, the Nobel Committee of the Karolinska Academy in Sweden decided to award the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan to recognize his discovery of the extinct ancient human genome and the human evolution .
Image source: Nobel Prize official website
As soon as the news was announced, it aroused people's curiosity, because compared with previous years, this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is a bit different. First, this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology was awarded separately to Svanter Parbo, while the past Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was generally awarded to two to three medical scientists. Second, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in the past mainly awarded the results of basic medical research and clinical research, but this year's awards were awarded to the anthropology field that studies human evolution. Although it is also related to medicine, it is obviously interdisciplinary.
However, this situation is not without precedent in the history of Nobel Prize . The 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to animal behavior and psychology research that had little to do with physiology or medicine. The winners were Konrad Zacharias Lorenz, Karl Ritter von Frisch and Nikolaas "Niko" Tinbergen of . Lorentz et al. founded a new discipline in the 1940s - Animal Behavior , which believed that the interaction between genetic and environmental conditions determines the way animals respond to stimuli. The various natural behaviors of animals can be seen as the result of genetic programming and environmental promotion.
To study animals can win the Nobel Prize means that studying animals is studying humans. Inferring adaptive behaviors in animals to the complex social and psychological patterns of humans will have a significant effect on genetics , evolutionary psychology and sociobiology.
Now, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for more full reasons. The award-winning research results reveal the unique evolutionary process of human beings, explaining where we come from and where we may go in the future. Such research results won the Nobel Prize, which shows the importance of human evolution research.
Swanter Parbo's research mainly shows that the ancestors of modern people, Homo sapiens and later modern people ( late Homo sapiens ) have had marital marriage and gene exchanges with the deceased Neanderthal and Denisovan . First, Neanderthal DNA sequence is more similar to that of modern humans from Europe or Asia than those from contemporary humans from Africa. This means that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens crossed during their thousands of years of coexistence. In modern humans with European or Asian descent, about 1%-4% of the genome comes from Neanderthals.
Some of the genes transferred by Neanderthals to modern people may be beneficial, but most of them may be neutral or harmful to modern people. On the one hand, Neanderthal extinction was due to its genes not adapting to modern life; on the other hand, studies have found that genetic variations originating from Neanderthals were significantly correlated with an increase in the risk of 12 diseases including heart disease and thickening of arterial walls. This may also be the reason for their extinction, but how the Neanderthals became extinct remains to be explored.
Swant Parbo's research also shows that modern people have had marriage and genetic communication with Denisovans. This relationship first appeared in the population of Melanesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, where individuals carry up to 6% of Denisovan DNA. Later, more research discovered the Denisovans and believed that this was an extinct race that might have lived on the Asian continent during the late Pleistocene. The Denisovans are different from the Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, but the Denisovans and Neanderthals are sister groups (two branches derived from the same ancestor).
The gene exchange between Denisovans and modern people has one of the most famous gifts. They transferred the EPAS1 gene to modern people, which is more common in Tibetans and Sherpas in Tibet. The EPAS1 gene is particularly important in hypoxic environments. It can improve the efficiency of oxygen transportation and make people adapt to hypoxic environments.
All of this shows that the evolution of human beings is that you have me and I have you. Understanding us today from the past will be conducive to the future development of mankind. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded a major discovery to human evolution is that it has a unique vision, not a deviant move. (Zhang Tiankan)
