STORY: The Nobel Prize for Medicine 2022 goes to Svante Pääbo. As the Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Monday, the Swedish scientist will be honored for his discoveries in the field of genomic and evolutionary research. One of his major achievements is the sequencing of an entire Neanderthal genome to reveal the link between extinct hominids and modern humans. Pääbo conducts research at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig. There he was congratulated and celebrated by employees on Monday. He himself was overwhelmed by his award. “I thought it was a hoax at first, an elaborate quip by my research group, but then it sounded a little too convincing, but it was hard to digest right off the bat.” He says he started his research 30 years ago as a kind of hobby Pääbo. Now it is perceived as a serious issue. And even with a current reference. “We have found out, for example, that in the case of the COVID pandemic, the greatest risk factor of becoming seriously ill and even dying when infected with the virus is from Neanderthals passed to modern humans. Therefore, we and others are now intensively studying the Neanderthal version of the human genome versus the protective modern version to understand what a functional difference might be. And if we understand that, maybe we could treat COVID better too. But first and foremost it is of course research that is driven by historical curiosity, if you will.” With Pääbo’s award, Germany as a science location can look forward to attention right at the start of this year’s Nobel Prize week. The prize, which is one of the most prestigious of the scientific world, is endowed with 10 million Swedish crowns, the equivalent of around 920,000 euros.