2024-10-07 10:37:03
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology goes to Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation, the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm reported on Monday.
The 2024 Nobel Prize for Medicine “honors two scientists for their discovery of a fundamental principle that governs the regulation of genetic activity”, explained the Swedish Academy as soon as it announced the prize.
Their discovery revealed a “completely new” principle of genetic regulation, key to the development and functioning of multicellular organisms, including humans, whose genome encodes more than a thousand microRNAs, the Nobel Assembly noted in its motivation of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
“We want to emphasize the importance of understanding basic functions, which is always the first step towards using this knowledge,” said Gunilla Karlsson, president of the Nobel Committee for Medicine, in a press conference to explain the importance of the prize.
Karlsson pointed out that there are currently numerous studies based on the winners’ results to develop treatments for cancer or cardiovascular diseases.
The Nobel Committee recalled that genetic information passes from DNA to messenger RNA (mRNA) through a process of transcription, and from there to the cellular machinery for the production of proteins, where the mRNAs are transformed so that the proteins develop according to genetic instructions stored in DNA.
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The progress of microRNAs explained by 2024 Nobel Prize winners in Medicine Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun. EFE/EPA/Christine Olsson
” data-medium-file=” data-large-file=” tabindex=”0″ role=”button” alt=”Nobel Medicine 2024″ class=”wp-image-357858 lazyload” style=”width:596px;height :auto” src=” srcset=” 900w, 300w, 768w” data-sizes=”auto” data-eio-rwidth=”900″ data-eio-rheight=”599″/>Explaining the winners’ microRNA advances Nobel Prize for Medicine 2024, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun. EFE/EPA/Christine Olsson
Transcription factors
As early as the 1960s, it was shown that specialized proteins, known as transcription factors, can bind to specific regions of DNA and control the flow of genetic information by determining which mRNA is produced.
Since then, thousands of transcription factors have been identified, and it was long believed that the fundamental principles of gene regulation had been resolved.
As doctoral students in the late 1980s, Ambros and Ruvkun began studying a millimeter-long nematode worm called Celegans, which has many of the specialized cell types found in more complex animals.
Their interest was mainly focused on the genes that control the activation of different genetic programs so that cells develop at the right time, and they focused on two mutant strains of worms (lin-4 and lin-14).
Ambros later discovered that the lin-4 gene produced an unusually small RNA molecule that lacked a protein-making code, and that this was responsible for inhibiting lin-14.
At the same time, Ruvkun demonstrated that it is not the production of lin-14 mRNA that is inhibited by lin-4, but rather that the regulation occurs later, when protein production ceases.
The two compared their findings and performed new experiments that allowed them to reveal a new level of genetic regulation, publishing their findings in 1993.
This unusual mechanism was initially considered irrelevant to humans, until Ruvkun’s research group published in 2000 another microRNA encoded by the lin-7 gene, present throughout the animal kingdom, paving the way for the subsequent discovery of hundreds of different microRNAs and a new dimension of genetic regulation.
For the vice-president of the Nobel Committee for Physiology and Medicine, Olle Kampe, this is “one of the great Nobel Prizes because it is a completely new physiological mechanism that no one expected and it shows that curiosity is very important in research”.
Thanks to this research we understand “much better how cells work”. In most tumors, “the micro-RNA networks are disturbed, so the tumor benefits,” said Kampe, who hopes applications will come in the future.
Kampe insisted on the importance of understanding the basic functions, which “is always the first step towards using this knowledge”.
From professors and researchers from Massachusetts and Harvard
Vittorio Ambrogio (Hannover, USA, 1953) graduated in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he subsequently obtained his doctorate, and currently works as a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Gary Ruvkun (Berkeley, 1952) studied biology at Harvard, then further studies at MIT and currently teaches genetics at Harvard Medical School.
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Biologist Gary Bruce Ruvkun, co-winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine, talks on the phone at his home in Newton Centre, Massachusetts (United States). EFE/EPA/CJ GUNTHER
” data-medium-file=” data-large-file=” tabindex=”0″ role=”button” alt=”nobel Medicine 2024″ class=”wp-image-357897 lazyload” style=”width:642px;height :auto” src=” srcset=” 900w, 300w, 768w” data-sizes=”auto” data-eio-rwidth=”900″ data-eio-rheight=”599″/>Biologist Gary Bruce Ruvkun, co- winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Medicine, speaks on the phone at his home in Newton Centre, Massachusetts (United States). EFE/EPA/CJ GUNTHER
Both succeed Hungarian Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman on the list of Nobel prizes, awarded in 2023 for laying the foundations for the development of messenger RNA vaccines against covid-19 and other infectious diseases.
Nobel Committee secretary Thomas Perlmann said he broke the news to Ruvkun by telephone. In the United States it was night and he was asleep, but when he saw what it was “he was excited and happy”, and his wife also called.
Ambros, however, could not hear the announcement directly from Perlmann, because when he called him the answering machine went off. “I left a message on his cell phone and hope he calls me soon.”
The winners will share the 11 million Swedish crowns (968,000 euros, 1.1 million dollars) with which all Nobel laureates are endowed this year.
The prize for Medicine or Physiology, which opens the Nobel group as always, will be followed in the next few days, in order, by those for Chemistry, Physics, Literature, Peace and Economics.
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