NuImagine looking through a telescope at a galaxy Ru light-years away. It takes hundreds of years for light to reach here from the galaxy. So, what is seen is the galaxy of a hundred years ago. The point is that we are actually looking at the past through the telescope!
A parallel phenomenon is taking place in genetics. Trace human ancestry by looking at DNA. The world of science has been witnessing a veritable ‘ancient DNA revolution’ for the last Jupiter cycle.
Swedish-born German researcher Svante Paabo, who led that ‘revolution’, has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
The complete human genome was discovered in 2001. Science has been able to read almost completely human DNA containing more than 300 million chemical letters. The subsequent boom in genome technologies set the stage for the ancient DNA revolution.
Fossils and ambiguous genetic evidence have until recently helped to understand the ancient history of human migration and so on. However, the story changed when it became possible to decipher the complete genome information from fossils and other ancient DNA fragments. Man’s prehistory is now being revealed to science in depth and breadth.
This advance has given us an opportunity to understand in detail the strange roles played by our ancestors in this historical theater called Earth, migration, mixing, and the ‘ghost population’ that helped shape the current population.
This revolution begins in 2010 with the publication of five ancient human genomes, including that of Neanderthal man. Then dozens of ancient genome data became available. As of August 2017, his laboratory alone has generated ‘genome-wide data’ from more than 3,000 ancient samples, says David Rysch, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.
Much of the technology behind the ancient DNA revolution was developed by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. It was led by Swante Pebo, the founder of the field of study called paleogenetics. Colleagues Matthias Meier and Qiaomei Fu helped perfect it.
Pebo and his team were thus able to develop a low-cost technique to extract and analyze DNA, even from dry ancient samples.
Human DNA is like a double spiral staircase with over 300 million steps. The DNA molecule contains genes that contain the chemical instructions for life, as well as large stretches of ‘junk DNA’. As DNA is copied from generation to generation, some misspellings occur. Call it ‘mutations’. These errors appear at the rate of one in a thousand letters. In other words, the human genome with 3 billion chemical characters contains 3 million mutans.
Researchers attempt to understand history by comparing different DNAs using these mutations in DNA as reference points. Mathematical techniques are now available to help us understand the relationship between different populations through genetic comparisons. The main one is the ‘Four Population Test’ developed under the leadership of mathematician Nick Peterson.
The first scientific revolution in archeology began with the discovery of ‘radiocarbon dating’ in 1949 by Willard Libby, an American chemist. This technique can be used to determine the age of ancient fossils. Now, a second scientific revolution is taking place in archeology with the help of ‘ancient DNA techniques’, says David Ryschk in ‘Who We Are and How We Got Here’.
Many long held beliefs are being questioned by this new revolution. It revisits not only archeology studies, but also history, anthropology, and even linguistics. ‘What happened in history’ can be understood more clearly. It is becoming clearer how different populations are genetically related. The details of ancient migrations can now be understood more clearly than ever before.
https://www.mathrubhumi.com/news/world/sweden-s-svante-paabo-wins-nobel-for-medicine-1.7928452
The use of genetics to study human history is nothing new. The ‘mitochondrial DNA’ of cells was previously relied upon in this regard. It was Alan Wilson of the University of California at Berkeley in the US who proved that the human past can be traced with the help of mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the mother. In 1987, Wilson and colleagues found that all history traces back to the motherland in Africa. This lends solid support to archaeological arguments about human evolution and ancient colonization.
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Wilson’s study was the conclusion that the ‘mitochondrial Eve’ of humans lived in Africa two million years ago (the ‘mitochondrial eve’ of all humans on Earth was coined by journalist Roger Levin in an article in the journal Science). This practice has greatly influenced the human imagination. Even today, not only ordinary people, but also scientists use that practice. In the sense of great-grandmother of all people.
Perhaps this is a misleading conclusion, as studies since 2010, when the ancient DNA boom began, show that there are many diverse ancestors, not just one ancestor or ancestor!
(അവലംബം: 1. Nobel Prize official Site; 2. Who We are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (2018). By David Reich. Oxford University Press, New Delhi ; 3. Discover, June 19, 2017)
Content Highlights: Nobel Prize 2022, Svante Pääbo, Medicine, Human Evolution, Ancient DNA Technology
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