American scientists win Nobel prize in medicine for discovering microRNA
- In Reports
- 05:14 PM, Oct 07, 2024
- Myind Staff
Two American scientists, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology on Monday for their important research on how genes work.
They discovered microRNA, which the Nobel Assembly describes as "a basic principle that controls how gene activity is regulated." These tiny molecules are crucial for determining how different cells, which have the same genetic information, can have different traits. For example, nerve cells and muscle cells can look and function very differently even though they share the same genetic instructions.
The Nobel announcement stated, "The answer lies in gene regulation, which allows each cell to select only the relevant instructions."microRNA is essential for this process in all multicellular organisms, including humans.
The Nobel Committee announced, "Their surprising discovery revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation. MicroRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function."
Ambros and Ruvkun conducted their research in the 1980s using a 1mm roundworm that contains many specialised cell types. Although their findings were groundbreaking, they were initially ignored by many scientists, who thought their research was not relevant to humans or more complex animals.
However, later studies, including the discovery of another microRNA in 2000, showed that humans have over a thousand different microRNA genes.
Victor Ambros, 70, was born in Hanover, New Hampshire. He earned his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979 and is now the Silverman Professor of Natural Science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.
Gary Ruvkun, born in Berkeley, California, in 1952, received his PhD from Harvard University in 1982 and is now a Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School.
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