The Nobel Prize

BREAKING NEWS The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation. This year’s Nobel Prize honours two scientists for their discovery of a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated. The information stored within our chromosomes can be likened to an instruction manual for all cells in our body. Every cell contains the same chromosomes, so every cell contains exactly the same set of genes and exactly the same set of instructions. Yet, different cell types, such as muscle and nerve cells, have very distinct characteristics. How do these differences arise? The answer lies in gene regulation, which allows each cell to select only the relevant instructions. This ensures that only the correct set of genes is active in each cell type. This year’s medicine laureates Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were interested in how different cell types develop. They discovered microRNA, a new class of tiny RNA molecules that play a crucial role in gene regulation. Their groundbreaking discovery revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans. It is now known that the human genome codes for over one thousand microRNAs. Their surprising discovery revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation. MicroRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.

Watch the very moment the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was announced earlier today. Presented by Thomas Perlmann, the secretary of the medicine committee. See the full announcement: https://bit.ly/3TYxCjv #NobelPrize

This year's medicine prize was shared by two individuals, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun. But did you know it's been awarded to a single person 40 times? Check out the statistics for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3TXeLp4 #NobelPrize

Did you miss the announcement of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine? Watch these highlights to find out how our new laureates, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, started their day.

“Have you been getting calls from Sweden?” Victor Ambros’ son woke his up this morning with a surprising question. We speak to Ambros about his first reactions after being awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

This year’s medicine laureate Gary Ruvkun was born in Berkeley, California, USA in 1952. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1982. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA in 1982-1985. He became a principal investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in 1985, where he is now professor of genetics. https://lnkd.in/efJrwa-k

2024 Nobel Prize laureate in physiology or medicine Victor Ambros was born in 1953 in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA. He received his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, in 1979 where he also did postdoctoral research in 1979-1985. He became a principal investigator at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA in 1985. He was a professor at Dartmouth Medical School from 1992-2007 and he is now Silverman Professor of Natural Science at the UMass Chan Medical School, Worcester, MA. https://lnkd.in/eiaDzVAN

This year’s medicine laureates Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun discovered a new principle of gene regulation, mediated by a previously unknown type of RNA, microRNA. They published their results in 1993 but were initially met with almost deafening silence from the scientific community. Although the results were interesting, the unusual mechanism of gene regulation was considered likely irrelevant to humans and other more complex animals. That perception changed in 2000 when Ruvkun's research group published their discovery of another microRNA that was highly conserved and present throughout the animal kingdom. Ruvkun's article sparked great interest, and over the following years, hundreds of different microRNAs were identified. Today, we know that there are more than a thousand genes for different microRNAs in humans, and that gene regulation by microRNA is universal among multicellular organisms. Intriguingly, a single microRNA can regulate the expression of many different genes, and conversely, a single gene can be regulated by multiple microRNAs, thereby coordinating and fine-tuning entire networks of genes. The 2024 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation. Learn more Press release: https://bit.ly/4dEie37 Advanced information: https://bit.ly/3Y2fiIZ

"They were looking at two worms that looked a bit funny and decided to understand why." Nobel Committee member, Olle Kämpe, tells us about the implications of this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. 2024 medicine laureates Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, followed their curiosity and discovered a new mechanism for gene regulation. Learn more about the prize: https://bit.ly/3Bsn7P5