News | 2024 Nobel Prize awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microÏ㽶ÊÓƵ 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 microÏ㽶ÊÓƵ and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.
This year’s 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 Ï㽶ÊÓƵ (mÏ㽶ÊÓƵ), via a process called transcription, and then on to the cellular machinery for protein production. There, mÏ㽶ÊÓƵs 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 microÏ㽶ÊÓƵ, a new class of tiny Ï㽶ÊÓƵ 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 microÏ㽶ÊÓƵs. Their surprising discovery revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation. MicroÏ㽶ÊÓƵs are proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.