GUWAHATI: The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute on Monday, October 7 has awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.
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Ambros and Ruvkun’s work, which discovered a new class of small RNA molecules, has reshaped the understanding of how genetic information is controlled after transcription. Their discovery of microRNA revealed an entirely new layer in the regulation of gene activity, a principle crucial to the development and function of multicellular organisms—including humans.
MicroRNAs, now known to number in the thousands within the human genome, act like cellular traffic controllers, ensuring that genetic instructions flow smoothly from DNA to messenger RNA, and ultimately, to protein production. This regulatory mechanism is essential for everything from cell development to how organisms function day to day.