Two American scientists were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology on Monday for their groundbreaking research into the behavior of genes.
Victor Ambrose and Gary Lubukun discovered microRNAs, which the Nobel Conference describes as “a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated.”
Small microRNA molecules play a key role in determining how different cells, which have the same chromosome, essentially an instruction manual, have different properties.
They tried to explore, for example, how nerve cells and muscle cells have very different properties despite having the same genetic information.
“The answer lies in genetic regulation that allows each cell to select only the relevant instructions,” the Nobel Prize announcement said. And newly discovered microRNAs are essential for doing this for all multicellular organisms, including humans.
“Their surprising discovery reveals an entirely new dimension of gene regulation. MicroRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important to how organisms develop and function,” the Nobel Committee said. said.
Working in the 1980s, Ambros and Lubukun studied 1 mm roundworms, which contain many specialized cell types.
Although now considered pioneering, the published findings were “initially met with deafening silence from the scientific community,” with many other scientists arguing that they had no relevance to humans or complex animals. The Nobel Prize announcement said it had concluded that there was no such thing.
However, subsequent research, including the discovery of another microRNA in 2000, demonstrated that humans have more than 1,000 genes corresponding to different microRNAs.
Mr. Ambrose, 70, was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, earned his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979, and is currently the Silverman Professor of Natural Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.
Mr. Lubukun was born in Berkeley, California, in 1952, received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1982, and is currently a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.
