Nobel prize for medicine goes to the pair who discovered microRNA
The 2024 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine has gone to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery that tiny pieces of RNA called microRNAs play a key role in controlling genes
By Michael Le Page
7 October 2024
Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun are announced as the winners of the 2024 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine
Jonathan Nackstrand AFP via Getty Images
The 2024 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of tiny pieces of RNA, called microRNAs, that play a key role in regulating gene activity in animals and plants.
The reason they are important is that a single microRNA can control many different genes. A single gene can also be regulated by multiple microRNAs.
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“The seminal discovery of microRNAs has introduced a new and unexpected mechanism of gene regulation,” said Olle Kämpe, the vice-chair of the Nobel committee for physiology and medicine. “These are important for our understanding of embryological development, normal physiology and diseases such as cancer.”
Ambros and Ruvkun made the discovery while studying mutant strains of a nematode worm called Caenorhabditis elegans. Their work began in the 1980s while at the same lab. Ambros then moved to Harvard University and Ruvkun to Massachusetts General Hospital, where they continued studying the mutant strains.
The instructions for making proteins are stored in the DNA in the nucleus of cells. RNA copies of these instructions, called messenger RNAs, carry this information to the protein-making factories outside the nucleus. Messenger RNAs, or mRNAs, can be many thousands of RNA letters long.
