American scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of microRNAs, small RNA molecules that regulate how genes are controlled.
MicroRNAs help control gene activity, allowing cells to perform a wide range of functions in the body. They help understand why, despite having the same genetic information in their DNA, the cells of the human body vary so much.
The Nobel committee described their work as a "revolutionary discovery [that] revealed an entirely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans."
Ambros, 70, was the first person to clone microRNA in 1993, while Ruvkun, 72, made his discovery in 2000. Ambros, who is now a professor of natural sciences at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, was at Harvard University at that time, when he did the cloning. Ruvkun, now a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, was part of Massachusetts General Hospital.
"Everyone thought that the main problem in gene regulation had already been solved," said Olle Kämpe, vice-president of the Nobel Assembly. "That changed in recent decades, and now researchers know that the human genome codes for more than 1,000 microRNAs," he continued.
"As researchers, we now have a much better understanding of how cells work," said Kämpe.
It is still not clear how the discovery of microRNAs can be applied in medicine, but it has the potential to play an important role in the treatment of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, etc.
