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Associated Press

Reuters

US scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun won the Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday for their discovery of microRNA and its role in how genes are regulated.
Understanding the regulation of gene activity has been an important goal for decades, the Nobel jury said.
If gene regulation goes awry, it can lead to serious diseases such as cancer, diabetes, or autoimmunity.
“Their groundbreaking discovery revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans,” the jury said.
Ruvkun, 72, told Swedish public radio SR he was shocked to receive the prize committee’s call in the wee hours of Monday.
“It’s a big deal. It’s a big one. It’s an earthquake,” he said.
“The dog is confused by why it’s dark outside, and we are running around the house,” laughed Ruvkun, a professor at Harvard Medical School.
He said he looked forward to the Nobel gala banquet on December 10 in Stockholm, where the laureates will receive their prizes from the hands of Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf.
“It’s a party. You don’t think of a bunch of scientists as party animals but we really are.”

The Nobel Committee failed however to reach Ambros, who learned the news from an SR reporter who called and broke the news.
“Wow, that’s incredible! I didn’t know that,” the 70-year-old professor at the University of Massachusetts medical school said, adding: “Good. Wonderful.”
Collaborating but working separately, the pair conducted research on a 1 millimetre roundworm, C. elegans, to determine why cell mutations occurred and when.
They discovered microRNA, a new class of tiny RNA molecules that play a crucial role in gene regulation, which in turn allows each cell to select only relevant instructions.
Their findings were published in two articles in 1993.
“The seminal discovery of microRNA has introduced a new and unexpected mechanism of gene regulation,” Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the Nobel Assembly, told reporters.

“MicroRNAs are important for our understanding of embryological development, normal cell physiology and diseases such as cancer,” he said.
Ambros, 70, is a professor at the University of Massachusetts medical school while Ruvkun, 72, is a professor at Harvard Medical School.
The pair will receive their Nobel Prize, consisting of a diploma, a gold medal and a US$1 million cheque, from King Carl XVI Gustaf in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will and testament.
Last year, the medicine prize went to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for work on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology that paved the way for Covid-19 vaccines.
The Nobel season continues this week with the announcement of the winners of the physics prize on Tuesday and the chemistry prize on Wednesday.
They will be followed by the much-anticipated prizes for literature on Thursday and peace on Friday.
Several pundits believe Chinese author Can Xue will be the Swedish Academy’s choice this year – and she has the lowest odds on several betting sites.

An avant-garde fiction writer often likened to Kafka, her experimental style flips between utopia and dystopia and transforms the mundane into the surreal.
“I think it will be a woman from a language zone outside Europe,” Bjorn Wiman, culture editor at Sweden’s newspaper of record, Dagens Nyheter, said.
Others suggest it could go to Australian novelist Gerald Murnane, Britain’s Salman Rushdie or Kenya’s Ngugi wa Thiong’o.
The climax of the week comes on Friday, when the Nobel Peace Prize laureate is announced, but experts say predictions are harder than ever this year due to the growing number of crises in the world.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, the International Court of Justice and Afghan women’s rights activist Mahbouba Seraj have been mentioned as possibilities.
Given the existential risks to humanity posed by weapons systems that can operate autonomously without human control, several Nobel-watchers have also cited the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots as a potential laureate.


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Nobel Prize for medicine awarded for ‘groundbreaking’ discovery of microRNA

Nobel Committee Secretary General Thomas Perlmann speaks to the media in front of a picture of this year’s laureates Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkum during the announcement of the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Photo: AFP

Harvard Medical School professor and an investigator at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Gary Ruvkun. Photo: Harvard Medical School/Joshua Touster/Reuters

Victor Ambros, PhD, the Silverman Chair in Natural Sciences and professor of molecular medicine. Photo: UMass via AP

Chinese eriter Can Xue is among the favourites to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Phot: Chen Xiaozhen/AFP

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News

World

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun’s research revealed a new principle of gene regulation essential for multicellular organisms, including humans


Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun’s research revealed a new principle of gene regulation essential for multicellular organisms, including humans.


Nobel Prize

Medicine

Sweden