Two American scientists have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of microRNA “and its role in the regulation of post-transcribed genes,” the Nobel committee announced Monday.
Victor Ambros, affiliated with the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Gary Ruvkun, of Harvard Medical School, shared the award for their work to improve understanding of how gene activity is regulated, according to a press release.
Ambros and Ruvkun want to understand how different types of cells—say, muscle versus nerve—develop, since they all contain the same chromosomes with the same set of instructions. They discovered “a new class of RNA molecules,” wrote the Nobel committee, that translate DNA into the appropriate proteins needed for each type of cell.
“Having a basic understanding is the first step to making applications,” immunologist Gunilla Karlsson Hedestam, chair of the Nobel committee, said in a statement. “Although there are no clear applications available for microRNAs, understanding them, knowing that they exist, understanding their regulatory networks is always the first step.”
Source link
