News | 2024 Nobel Prize awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.
This year鈥檚 Nobel Prize focuses on the discovery of a vital regulatory mechanism used in cells to control gene activity. Genetic information flows from DNA to messenger RNA (mRNA), via a process called transcription, and then on to the cellular machinery for protein production. There, mRNAs are translated so that proteins are made according to the genetic instructions stored in DNA. Since the mid-20th century, several of the most fundamental scientific discoveries have explained how these processes work.
Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were interested in how different cell types develop. They discovered microRNA, a new class of tiny RNA molecules that play a crucial role in gene regulation. Their groundbreaking discovery revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans. It is now known that the human genome codes for over one thousand microRNAs. Their surprising discovery revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation. MicroRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.
