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STOCKHOLM, Sweden | TASS & Xinhua | The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to two American scientists, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA molecules that regulate gene activity, the Nobel Committee of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm announced.
The scientists won the award for “the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation,” the committee stated in its reasoning for the decision. It notes that microRNAs are “fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.” So, their discovery, published in 1993, “revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation” that “turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans.”
MicroRNAs are a new class of tiny RNA molecules that are essential in gene regulation. It is now known that the human genome codes for over 1,000 microRNAs.
Born on December 1, 1953, Ambros received his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1979. He has won numerous scientific awards and is known for being the discoverer of microRNA. Ruvkun was born on March 26, 1952. He worked with Ambros on microRNA, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The scientists also received the 2015 Breakthrough Prize, established in 2013 by internet entrepreneurs Yury Milner (Mail.ru Group), Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin (Google) and his ex-wife Anne Wojcicki (23andMe).
The Nobel Assembly said that the pair’s surprising discovery revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation. “MicroRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function,” the assembly added.
The announcement marked the start of this year’s Nobel Prize award season. The Nobel announcements will proceed with the physics prize on Tuesday, followed by chemistry on Wednesday, and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be revealed on Friday, and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced on Oct. 14. ■
