Yoshinori

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has gone to Sweden's Svante Paabo for his work on Human Evolution .

The Prize committee said he achieved The seemingly impossible task of cracking The genetic code of one of our extinct Relatives - Neanderthals.

He also performed The " sensational" feat of discovering The previously unknown relative - Denisova.

His work helped explore Our Own evolutionary history and how humans spread around The Planet .

The Swedish geneticist's work gets to The Heart of some of The Most fundamental questions - where do we come from and what allowed us, to succeed while our Relatives went extinct.

In The 1990s, research on working out The human genetic code was taking place at pace. But that relied on fresh samples of pristine DNA.

Prof Paabo's interest was in The old and degraded genetic material from our ancestors. He was, for The First Time , able to sequence DNA from a 40,000-year-old piece of bone.

Those results showed that Neanderthals - who mostly lived in Europe and Western Asia - were distinct from both modern day humans and chimpanzees.

His work focused on hominins - The Group of Modern Humans that includes us, but also our extinct Relatives .

" By revealing genetic differences that distinguish all living humans from extinct hominins, his discoveries provide The basis for exploring what makes us uniquely human" The Nobel committee said.

Further comparisons between Neanderthal DNA and humans from around The World showed their DNA was a closer matcher to humans coming from Europe or Asia .

This tells us that had sex and children with Neanderthals after migrating out of Africa around 70,000 years ago.

And you can still see The Legacy of that today. Between 1-4% of modern human DNA comes from our Neanderthals Relatives and this even affects Our Body 's ability to respond to infection.

He wins The 10m Swedish kronor (£800,000) prize.

Source of news: bbc.com