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Victor Ambros from the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and Gary Ruvkun from Harvard Medical School have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. They share the prize for their discovery of microRNAs, a family of molecules produced in the body that can profoundly alter gene expression.
In a press conference, Ruvkun remarked on his career, saying that “the surprises are what keep you young in science.” He also said of the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, in which he helped discover microRNAs, that their potent small RNA system “makes our little worms badass . . . and I was asserting this before the Nobel stinkin’ Prize.”
RNA biology is now the subject of a third Nobel Prize–winning discovery in the 21st century. Last year’s award in physiology or medicine went to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their work on messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, and in 2006, Andrew Fire and Craig Mello won the prize for their discovery of RNA interference.
“Honestly, this was not something that I expected,” Ambros said at a press conference. “In my opinion, the Nobel Prize to Mello and Fire encompassed all these phenomena that we studied.” He also thanked his wife, Rosalind “Candy” Lee for her crucial role in the discovery of microRNAs; Lee was a first author and Ambros last author on the Cell paper in which the production of a microRNA was first described (1993, DOI: 10.1016/0092-8674(93)90529-y).
MicroRNAs are short, single-stranded RNA molecules, one of several classes of non-protein coding RNAs that regulate gene expression. Scientists have been working toward unlocking the therapeutic potential of microRNAs, which can also serve as biomarkers for some diseases.
“It’s an RNA world we live in,” says Matthew Disney, a chemist at the University of Florida and scientific founder of Expansion Therapeutics, which is working on medicines that target microRNAs. “We’ve come through an era where RNA was the disease. SARS-CoV-2 has an RNA genome. And RNA is the cure: the mRNA vaccines.”
“I think this is going to further cement the importance of RNA,” he adds.
With additional reporting by Sarah Braner, Laura Howes, and Laurel Oldach
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