Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2024: What is the research that won the prize? | Explained  Premium

Nobel Prize in Medicine 2024: MicroRNAs, or miRNAs, are small, non-coding molecules of RNA. They play an important role in determining how much messenger RNA (mRNA), which carries genetic information, eventually gets translated into protein.

The story so far: The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, on Monday (October 7, 2024). The scientists won the esteemed prize for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.

Both Ambros and Ruvkun are American biologists. Ambros currently works at the Programme in Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts in the U.S. Ruvkun is a professor of genetics at the Harvard Medical School and researches microRNA and RNA interference mechanisms at the Ruvkun Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital.

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While their area of research is similar, Ambros and Ruvkun haven’t worked together since they were postdoctoral fellows in H. Robert Horvitz’s laboratory, who won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. “After that, they went to Harvard University and Harvard Medical School and set up their own labs and worked on different aspects of microRNA regulation. Ambros was the first one to clone a microRNA and Ruvkun cloned the second one...they haven’t collaborated a lot after their postdoctoral work as much as I know...but they did [share some data] and that was the key to this Nobel Prize,” Olle Kämpe, member of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine 2024, said in an interview after the prize announcement.

MicroRNAs, or miRNAs, are small, non-coding molecules of RNA. They are typically around 19-24 nucleotides long and play an important role in determining how much messenger RNA (mRNA), which carries genetic information, eventually gets translated into protein.

The body makes proteins in a complex process with two broad steps. In the transcription step, a cell copies a DNA sequence into messenger RNA (mRNA) in the nucleus. The mRNA moves from the nucleus, through the cell fluid, and attaches itself to the ribosome. In the translation step, another type of RNA called transfer RNA (tRNA) brings specific amino acids to the ribosome, where they are linked together in the order specified by the mRNA to make the protein.

Micro RNA, or miRNA, regulates the production of proteins by bonding with and subsequently silencing the mRNA at an appropriate juncture. The process is called post-transcriptional gene regulation.