07/10/2024 – 7:14
Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of microRNA, a new class of RNA molecules, which play a crucial role in the context of genetic regulation.Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology of 2024 for the discovery of microRNA, a new class of RNA molecules that play a crucial role in the context of genetic regulation.
The discovery, made in 1993, is considered a fundamental principle to explain how the genetic activity of multicellular organisms is regulated – including humans. In other words, these RNA micromolecules help muscle cells, gut cells, and different types of nerve cells to perform their specific functions.
The announcement was made this Monday (07/10) by the secretary general of the Nobel Assembly, Thomas Perlmann, at the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm, Sweden.
The other winners will be announced throughout this week: on Tuesday, the Nobel Prize in Physics; on the fourth, Chemistry, and on the fifth, Literature. The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday (11/10) and the Economics prize, next Monday.
Why Discovery Matters
The Nobel Committee explained that genetic regulation causes each cell to select only the information that is relevant for its specific type to function. This is why muscle and nerve cells are different – despite having exactly the same chromosomes, or “gene package”, and exactly the same “instruction manual”.
Gene regulation ensures that only the correct genes in each cell type are activated. Furthermore, “genetic activity needs to be continually adjusted to adapt cellular functions to changes in the conditions of our bodies and our environment”, says a text from the Nobel Committee, released after the announcement. “If gene regulation ‘goes wrong’, it can lead to serious illnesses, such as cancer, diabetes or autoimmune diseases. Therefore, understanding the regulation of genetic activity is an important objective. [da ciência] decades ago”, continues the text.
Last three winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine
In 2023, Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman received the award for developing the messenger RNA technology that paved the way for Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines.
The previous year, Swedish Svante Pääbo won for sequencing the Neanderthal genome and creating paleogenomics.
In 2021, Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the Nobel Prize for discoveries about heat and touch receptors in the skin.
More information in a moment.
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