Pääbo was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1955 and grew up there with his mother,[4]Estonian chemist Karin Pääbo (Estonian:[ˈpæːpo]; 1925–2013), who had escaped from theSoviet invasion in 1944[15] and arrived in Sweden as a refugee during World War II.[16][17] He was born through an extramarital affair[18] of his father, Swedish biochemistSune Bergström (1916–2004),[4] who, like his son, became a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (in 1982).[19] Pääbo is his mother's only child; he has via his father's marriage a half-brother, Rurik Reenstierna (also born in 1955), who only learned Svante was his brother in 2004.[20]
Pääbo grew up as a native Swedish speaker.[15] In a 2012 interview with the Estonian newspaperEesti Päevaleht, he said that he self-identifies as aSwede, but has a "special relationship with Estonia".[21]
In 1975, Pääbo began studying atUppsala University, serving one year in the Swedish Defense Forces attached to the School of Interpreters. Pääbo earned his Ph.D. from Uppsala University in 1986 for research investigating how the E19protein ofadenoviruses modulates theimmune system.[22]
From 1986 to 1987, he did postdoctoral research at the Institute for Molecular Biology II,University of Zurich, Switzerland.[25]
As anEMBO Postdoctoral Fellow, Pääbo moved to the United States in 1987, accepting a position as a postdoctoral researcher in biochemistry at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, where he joinedAllan Wilson's lab and worked on the genome of extinct mammals.[25][26]
In August 2002, Pääbo's department published findings about the "language gene",FOXP2, which is mutated in some individuals with language disabilities.[29]
In 2006, Pääbo announced a plan to reconstruct the entire genome of Neanderthals. In 2007, he was named one ofTime magazine's 100 most influential people of the year.[30]
In March 2010, Pääbo and his coworkers published a report about the DNA analysis of a finger bone found in theDenisova Cave inSiberia; the results suggest that thebone belonged to anextinct member of thegenusHomo that had not yet been recognised, theDenisova hominin.[33] Pääbo first wanted to classify the Denisovans as a species of their own, separate from modern humans and Neanderthals but changed his mind after peer-review.[34][35] In this context, Svante Pääbo was able to show that theTKTL1 gene discovered byJohannes F. Coy has a single amino acid substitution in Neanderthals compared to modern humans. This change probably influenced neuronal development and may have contributed to the difference in brain structure between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.[36]
In May 2010, Pääbo and his colleagues published a draft sequence of theNeanderthal genome in the journalScience.[37] He and his team also concluded that there was probably interbreeding between Neanderthals and Eurasian (but not Sub-Saharan African) humans.[38] There is general mainstream support in the scientific community for this theory ofinterbreeding between archaic and modern humans.[39] This admixture of modern human and Neanderthal genes is estimated to have occurred roughly between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, in the Middle East.[40]
In 2014, he published the bookNeanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes where he, in the mixed form of a memoir and popular science, tells the story of the research effort to map the Neanderthal genome combined with his thoughts on human evolution.[19][41]
In 2020,Hugo Zeberg and Svante Pääbo determined that more severe impacts upon victims of theCOVID-19 disease, including the vulnerability to it and the incidence of the necessity of hospitalisation, have been associated via DNA analysis to be expressed in genetic variants at chromosomal region 3, features that are associated with EuropeanNeanderthal heritage. That structure imposes greater risks that those affected will develop a more severe form of the disease.[42] The findings were described in a Nature article with Hugo Zeberg fromKarolinska Institutet and Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute.[42]
Pääbo wrote in his 2014 bookNeanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes that he isbisexual. He assumed he was gay until he metLinda Vigilant, an Americanprimatologist and geneticist whose "boyish charms" attracted him. "I had many relationships with men, but I also had girlfriends now and again". They have co-authored many papers, are married and raising a son and a daughter together inLeipzig.[56][57][5]
^Lena Nordlund, Annlouise Martin (Producers) (14 August 2014).Svante Pääbo(MP3) (Radio).Sveriges Radio. Event occurs at 1:15.Archived from the original on 3 October 2022. Retrieved2 May 2018.
^Külli Riin Tigasson (17 March 2012)."Svante Pääbo: mis tegi inimesest inimese?"(Interview with subject).Eesti Päevaleht (in Estonian).Archived from the original on 21 October 2022. Retrieved20 October 2022.Pääbo was quoted saying: "I grew up understanding what Estonia is, but I don't speak Estonian. I have never attended Estonian school. I identify with the Swedes, but I have a special relationship with Estonia."(Kasvasin üles teades, mis on Eesti, aga eesti keelt ma ei räägi. Ma pole kunagi käinud eesti koolis. Identifitseerin end rootslastega, aga mul on eriline suhe Eestiga)
^Pinson, Anneline; Xing, Lei; Namba, Takashi; Kalebic, Nereo; Peters, Jula; Oegema, Christina Eugster; Traikov, Sofia; Reppe, Katrin; Riesenberg, Stephan; Maricic, Tomislav; Derihaci, Razvan; Wimberger, Pauline; Pääbo, Svante; Huttner, Wieland B. (9 September 2022). "Human TKTL1 implies greater neurogenesis in frontal neocortex of modern humans than Neanderthals".Science.377 (6611) eabl6422.doi:10.1126/science.abl6422.ISSN1095-9203.PMID36074851.
^Green, R. E.; Krause, J.; Briggs, A. W.; Maricic, T.; Stenzel, U.; Kircher, M.; Patterson, N.; Li, H.; Zhai, W.; Fritz, M. H. Y.; Hansen, N. F.; Durand, E. Y.; Malaspinas, A. S.; Jensen, J. D.; Marques-Bonet, T.; Alkan, C.; Prüfer, K.; Meyer, M.; Burbano, H. A.; Good, J. M.; Schultz, R.; Aximu-Petri, A.; Butthof, A.; Höber, B.; Höffner, B.; Siegemund, M.; Weihmann, A.; Nusbaum, C.; Lander, E. S.; Russ, C.; et al. (2010)."A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome".Science.328 (5979):710–722.Bibcode:2010Sci...328..710G.doi:10.1126/science.1188021.PMC5100745.PMID20448178..
^Wong, Kate."Neandertal Genome Study Reveals That We Have a Little Caveman in Us".Scientific American.Archived from the original on 11 October 2022. Retrieved11 October 2022. "By way of explanation, the investigators suggest that the interbreeding occurred in the Middle East between 45,000 and 80,000 years ago, before moderns fanned out to other parts of the Old World and split into different groups."
^"Svante Paabo". London:Royal Society. 2016.Archived from the original on 29 April 2016. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
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