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Scientists Ambros, Ruvkun win Nobel Prize in Medicine for groundbreaking microRNA work

The Nobel Committee said that microRNAs are "fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function"

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun Steve Jennings/Getty Images

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun

© Steve Jennings/Getty Images

STOCKHOLM, October 7. /TASS/. The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA molecules that regulate gene activity, the Nobel Committee of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm announced.

The scientists won the award for "the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation," the committee stated in its reasoning for the decision. It notes that microRNAs are "fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function." So, their discovery, published in 1993, "revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation" that "turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans."

Born on December 1, 1953, Ambros received his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1979. He has won numerous scientific awards and is known for being the discoverer of microRNA. Ruvkun was born on March 26, 1952. He worked with Ambros on microRNA, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The scientists also received the 2015 Breakthrough Prize, established in 2013 by internet entrepreneurs Yury Milner (Mail.ru Group), Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin (Google) and his ex-wife Anne Wojcicki (23andMe).

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