The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden announced on Monday that American scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of microRNA molecules and their role in gene regulation after the transcription of genetic information.
In 1993, this year’s Nobel laureates published unexpected findings describing a new level of gene regulation that turned out to be extremely important and conserved throughout evolution. They discovered microRNA, a new class of small RNA molecules that play a crucial role in gene regulation.
MicroRNA is a vital molecule found in all living organisms and viruses and plays multiple roles in transmitting, encoding, decoding, and regulating the expression of genetic information and catalyzing many chemical reactions. A single microRNA can control many different genes, and a single gene can be regulated by multiple RNAs.
According to the press release from the Assembly, genetic information flows from DNA to messenger RNA (mRNA), and then to proteins. The identical genetic information is stored in the DNA of the body’s cells, which requires precise regulation of gene activity by the RNA molecules discovered by Ambros and Ruvkun.
Gene regulation by microRNAs, first revealed by this year’s laureates in medicine, has been at work for hundreds of millions of years and is the mechanism that has enabled the evolution of increasingly complex organisms. Previous studies suggest that cells and tissues do not develop normally without RNA.
“Understanding the regulation of gene activity has been an important goal for decades, as faulty gene regulation can lead to serious diseases such as cancer, diabetes, or autoimmune diseases. Scientists have already found mutations in genes that encode RNA in humans, causing conditions such as congenital hearing loss and eye and skeletal disorders. Mutations in a protein required for RNA production also cause DICER1 syndrome, a rare but cancer-related syndrome in various organs and tissues,” the Assembly said.
Ambros and Ruvkun made their discovery by studying mutant strains of a small roundworm called C. elegans. Their research began while working in the laboratory of Robert Horvitz at MIT, who won the Nobel Prize in 2002. Ambros then moved to Harvard University, and Ruvkun to Massachusetts General Hospital, where they continued to study mutant strains.
