Nobel Prize in Medicine for 2024 awarded to Victor Ambros, Gary Ruvkun for discovery of microRNA

The Nobel Prize in Medicine for 2024 was awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun from the US for their discovery of microRNA, and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.

"The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet has decided to award the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun “for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation,” the award-giving body said.

"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 RNA (mRNA), via a process called transcription, and then on to the cellular machinery for protein production. There, mRNAs are translated so that proteins are made according to the genetic instructions stored in DNA.," the Nobel Prize release read.

"Their groundbreaking discovery in the small worm C. elegans revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation. This turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans. MicroRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function," it added.

In 1993, they published unexpected findings describing a new level of gene regulation, which turned out to be highly significant and conserved throughout evolution.

It is important to note that the winners for medicine are selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden's Karolinska Institute Medical University and thay receive a prize sum of 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million).

Victor Ambros

Victor R. Ambros is an American biologist. He discovered the first known microRNA (miRNA). Ambros is currently working as a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts. He received his BS in Biology from MIT in 1975 and completed his PhD in 1979 at the same institute.

In 1993, Ambros and his co-workers Rosalind Lee and Rhonda Feinbaum reported in the journal Cell that they had discovered single-stranded non-protein-coding regulatory RNA molecules in the organism C. elegans.

He was born in New Hampshire in 1953. His father was a Polish war refugee and Victor grew up on a small dairy farm in Hartland.

Gary Ruvkun

Gary Bruce Ruvkun is a US based molecular biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He discovered the mechanism by which lin-4, through which the first microRNA (miRNA) was discovered by Victor Ambros. Ruvkun also discovered many features of insulin-like signaling in the regulation of aging and metabolism.

Ruvkun obtained his undergraduate degree in 1973 at the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his PhD work at Harvard University in the laboratory of Frederick M. Ausubel.