Laureates are Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun; microRNA is a small RNA molecule essential for cell development
The North Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun they were laureates this Monday (Oct 7, 2024) with the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. According to the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute, in Sweden, they were awarded for the discovery of microRNA and “its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation”.
MicroRNA is a class of small RNA molecules that play a crucial role in gene regulation and are fundamental to cell development. The laureates will share the prize of 11 million Swedish kronor (around R$5.8 million).
Gary Ruvkun was born in Berkeley, California (USA), in 1952. He was a postdoctoral researcher at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) from 1982 to 1985. He became a researcher at the Harvard University School of Medicine in 1985. He is currently a professor of genetics at the educational institution. According to Nobel, his discovery helped to understand how genes are activated and deactivated in cells.
Victor Ambros was born in 1953 in Hanover, New Hampshire (USA). He became a principal investigator at Harvard University in 1985. He was a professor at Dartmouth Medical School from 1992 to 2007 and is now a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
The Nobel Committee declared that the discovery “innovative“from microRNA”revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that proved essential for multicellular organisms”, including humans.
“It is now known that the human genome encodes more than 1,000 microRNAs. Their surprising discovery revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation.”reads the statement. “MicroRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important for the development and functioning of organisms”, says the text.
Precise regulation of gene activity is important so that only the correct set of genes are active in each specific cell type. “This allows, for example, muscle cells, intestinal cells and different types of nerve cells to carry out their specialized functions.”, states the statement.
“Furthermore, genetic activity must be continually adjusted to adapt cellular functions to changing conditions in our bodies and environment. If gene regulation goes wrong, it can lead to serious diseases such as cancer, diabetes or autoimmunity. Therefore, understanding the regulation of gene activity has been an important goal for many decades.”, he adds.
At the end of the 1980s, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun began research that led, years later, to the discovery of microRNAs
“The published results were initially met with almost deafening silence from the scientific community.”, says the text. This silence is due to the fact that the results were considered “a peculiarity” of the objects of study, “probably irrelevant to humans and other more complex animals” than those analyzed.
This perception changed in 2000, with the publication of a new study by Ruvkun.
“The article aroused great interest and, in the following years, hundreds of different microRNAs were identified. Today, we know that there are more than 1,000 genes for different microRNAs in humans and that gene regulation by microRNA is universal among multicellular organisms.”, declared the Nobel Committee.
Read the release calendar for the other 2024 Nobel Prizes:
- Physical – Tuesday (8.Oct.2024);
- Chemical – Wednesday (9.Oct.2024);
- Literature – Thursday (October 10, 2024);
- Peace – Friday (October 11, 2024);
- Economy – next Monday (October 14, 2024).
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