Nobel medicine prize goes to Ambros and Ruvkun for microRNA discovery

Gary Ruvkun was woken up in the early hours to the news he had been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The American scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun receive this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine. They are rewarded for the discovery of microRNAs, which help regulate which genes are expressed.

“For the discovery of micro-RNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation”. This is the rationale for this year’s prize winners in physiology or medicine, developmental biologist Victor Ambros and molecular biologist Gary Ruvkun.

This year’s Nobel laureate in medicine or physiology has figured out what makes a nerve cell become a nerve, and how a muscle cell knows that it should build muscles.

Every single cell in our body has exactly the same genetic material. The DNA helices look the same in every cell nucleus. All the genes are there – but not all are functional. The genes that code for specific muscles are simply turned off in the nerve cells.

Previously unknown mechanism
Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun discovered that the small molecule, called microRNA, ensures that the right genes are turned on, and turned off when they are not needed. This function was absolutely necessary for life on Earth to take the big leap from being a single-celled organism to becoming multicellular.

• This award covers a very important regulatory mechanism that was previously unknown. In short, how can you actually say that a liver cell becomes a liver cell, says Jon Lundberg, member of the Nobel Assembly KI, professor of pharmacology in SVT.’s broadcast.

Source: svt