Stockholm.-The 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology was awarded to Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA, a fundamental principle that regulates the activity of genes, the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm announced this Monday.
Their findings “are proving to be of fundamental importance in how organisms develop and function,” the Nobel Assembly said in its official announcement.
Ambrose conducted the research that earned him the prize at Harvard University. He is currently a Professor of Natural Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Ruvkun’s research was conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where he is a professor of genetics, said Thomas Perlmann, Secretary General of the Nobel Committee.
This revolutionary finding revealed a new fundamental principle of gene regulation, essential for multicellular organisms, including humans.
Ambros and Ruvkun, initially working with the worm C. elegans, identified small RNA molecules capable of controlling the activity of specific genes. Their research demonstrated that these molecules, now known as microRNAs, play a crucial role in the development and function of organisms.
The human genome is now known to encode more than a thousand different microRNAs, each with the potential to regulate multiple genes.
This gene regulation mechanism has been operating for hundreds of millions of years, allowing the evolution of increasingly complex organisms. Alterations in microRNA regulation have been linked to various diseases, including cancer and congenital disorders.
The discovery, initially met with skepticism by the scientific community, has transformed our understanding of how gene expression is regulated in multicellular organisms.
“Ambros and Ruvkun’s seminal discovery in the small worm C. elegans was unexpected and revealed a new dimension of gene regulation, essential for all complex life forms,” according to the Karolinska Institutet Nobel Assembly.
The medicine prize has been awarded 114 times to a total of 227 laureates. Only 13 women have achieved recognition that includes 11 million Swedish crowns (one million dollars) in cash, obtained from a fund left by the creator of the contest, the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.
Last year’s winners were Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman, for discoveries that allowed the creation of messenger RNA vaccines against COVID-19, which were crucial in stopping the pandemic.
The announcement kicked off this year’s Nobel Prize season. The Nobel Prize in Medicine will be followed by the announcements on successive days of those in Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace and finally that of Economics, next Monday.
The selection process is the same in all categories: scientists, academics and university professors present the candidatures and the different Nobel committees establish several criteria to choose the winner or winners, up to three per prize.
The prizes can be void, something that has happened on 49 occasions, but since 1974 they cannot be awarded posthumously, unless the winner dies in the period between the award and the award.
Two people have voluntarily rejected an award: the French writer Jean Paul Sartre, for Literature, in 1964; and the Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho, the one of Peace, in 1973.
There have been four cases of forced rejection by their governments, the best known, that of Boris Pasternak, who the Soviet authorities forced not to accept in 1958, that of Literature.
The awards are presented on December 10, coinciding with the anniversary of Nobel’s death, in a double ceremony at the Konserthus in Stockholm and at the Oslo City Hall.Infobae.
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