Slon, who was recognized for this work by inclusion in Nature’s annual list of top ten scientists in 2018, worked through the statistical challenges of interpreting a genome sequenced at relatively low coverage from highly degraded material. The 2.6-fold average coverage of the nuclear genome was enough to establish the basic population ancestry, but the researchers were careful in their interpretation. They tested multiple models of ancestry and used explicit likelihood frameworks to distinguish between the scenarios that could produce the observed genomic composition.
The published paper in Nature in 2018 included supplementary methods running to many pages—detailed descriptions of how the DNA was extracted, the libraries prepared, the sequencing performed, and the statistical analysis conducted. This transparency is a feature of ancient DNA research that has been hard-won: the field’s history includes high-profile errors and retractions, and the community developed rigorous standards for publication precisely because the data are so difficult to generate and so easy to misinterpret.
Pääbo, who had led the field from the moment he first successfully extracted ancient DNA in the 1980s and who built the Max Planck Institute’s ancient DNA program into the world’s most productive facility for this work, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2022. The prize citation recognized his contributions to the discovery of Neanderthal DNA, the discovery of the Denisovans, and the development of the methods that made ancient genomics possible. The Denisova 11 study was one of the crowning achievements of the research program he had built.