Svante Paabo is the father of ancient DNA extraction, beginning many years ago with Egyptian mummies. His lecture style is wonderful and understandable. I would love to attend one of his lectures. Today, he is one of two tenured professors in Evolutionary Genetics at Max Planck in Germany.
His speech if in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition of “Genome, Unlocking Life’s Code” at the National Institute of Health.
Archaic Genomics – this video is very similar to the one above although the Q and A at the end is different. So if you watch the first one, then in the second one, just skip to the end of his lecture. There Q&A is very worthwhile in both of these videos.
Svante Paabo documented his path to the Neanderthal genome in his marvelous book, Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes recently published. It’s an amazing book, written in a very personal and approachable manner and easily understood by the non-scientist. It’s an amazing story and we’re lucky to have Dr. Paabo to share it with us.
If you carry Asian or European DNA, you have Neanderthal ancestors, and you’ll want to watch these videos and read this book.