This year, the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine was awarded to scientists Viktor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their revolutionary discovery of miRNA and its key role in post-transcriptional gene regulation. About this announced Nobel Committee.
The discovery of these tiny RNA molecules is said to be a breakthrough in understanding how gene regulation works in multicellular organisms, including humans. The human genome contains more than a thousand microRNAs, and their role is critically important for the normal development and functioning of the body.
“Ambros and Ruvkun’s discovery changed our understanding of genetic regulation, opening up a new dimension in this field,” – noted in the committee.
In the late 1980s, Ambros and Ruvkun worked in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Robert Horwitz, studying the genes responsible for the precise activation of various genetic programs during cell development. Their research in worm models with mutations that disrupted the activation of these programs led to the discovery of miRNAs.
Victor Ambros was born in 1953 in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA. After receiving his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he worked as a research scientist at Harvard University and later became a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Gary Ruvkun, born in 1952 in Berkeley, California, received his PhD from Harvard University and worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
