The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA, a new class of tiny RNA molecules that play a crucial role in gene regulation. Ambros, 70, is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School while Ruvkun, 72, is a professor at Harvard Medical School.
"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," institute has said in an official statement.
