Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun Awarded Nobel Prize for Discovery of MicroRNA

MIT alumnus Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun have been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced in Stockholm. The two scientists were recognized for their pioneering discovery of microRNA, a class of molecules essential for gene regulation.

Ambros, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, and Ruvkun, a professor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, made significant advancements in understanding gene control mechanisms. “Their groundbreaking discovery revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans,” stated the Nobel committee. “It is now known that the human genome codes for over one thousand microRNAs.”

During the late 1980s, Ambros and Ruvkun conducted postdoctoral research in the laboratory of H. Robert Horvitz at MIT. This collaboration laid the groundwork for their Nobel-winning findings. Their research focused on the roundworm C. elegans, specifically investigating the lin-4 and lin-14 genes that exhibited abnormalities in genetic program activation timings.

In the early 1990s, Ambros discovered that the lin-4 gene produced a short RNA molecule that inhibited lin-14 expression, marking a significant breakthrough in gene regulation research. Concurrently, Ruvkun showed that this RNA molecule blocked the translation of messenger RNA into protein, a previously unknown regulatory mechanism. Their findings were published in two seminal articles in the journal Cell in 1993.

Further research by Ruvkun in 2000 led to the identification of another microRNA, let-7, which is prevalent across the animal kingdom. To date, researchers have identified over 1,000 microRNA genes in humans, underscoring their importance in developmental processes and functioning of organisms.

Victor Ambros was born in New Hampshire and raised in Vermont. He earned his PhD from MIT under the supervision of Nobel Laureate David Baltimore. Prior to his appointment at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in 2008, Ambros was a faculty member at Dartmouth College. Gary Ruvkun, an alumnus of the University of California, Berkeley, completed his PhD at Harvard University before embarking on postdoctoral research at MIT.