MicroRNA Pioneers Win Nobel Prize in Medicine
Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun discovered tiny molecules that affect gene regulation
The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA, tiny molecules that help control how genes are expressed.
Their findings unlocked new areas of research into the roles these molecules play in human health. Researchers are exploring microRNA treatments for cancer, hepatitis and heart disease.
Ambros and Ruvkun were postdoctoral fellows in the 1980s in the laboratory of biologist Robert Horvitz, who won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his research in gene regulation. In Horvitz’s lab, they studied the roundworm C. elegans to better understand the role genes play in the development of different cell types.
Researchers already knew genes are copied to make molecules called mRNA that are translated into proteins that help determine cell type. The discovery of microRNA added new understanding to how genes can be turned on or off.
Ambros, with the help of research assistant Rosalind Lee—who also happens to be his wife—and geneticist Rhonda Feinbaum, discovered the first microRNA in 1993. It appeared to be responsible for a mutation in the worms he studied in the lab.
Ambros has said he wondered whether the finding was limited to worms. But a few years later Ruvkun, who was a close friend of Ambros, found another example of microRNA, one in humans and many other creatures.
Researchers have since found microRNA in animals, plants and some viruses. Hundreds have been found in people. The molecules can bind to mRNA in cell cytoplasm and destroy that section of mRNA or preserve it for use later.
The Nobel committee on Monday said it had reached a sleepy Ruvkun, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School, over the phone before the prize announcement around 5:30 a.m. ET.
“The call from Stockholm is mythic in the world of science,” Ruvkun said in an interview with the Swedish organization that awards the Nobel Prize shortly after learning of his win. Asked if he could send an in-the-moment photo of himself, Ruvkun replied: “Oh god, I’m having a bad hair day.”
Thomas Perlmann, the committee’s secretary, said he left a voicemail for Ambros, a professor at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, Mass.
Ambros said at a press conference that he was sleeping and got the news from his son, who had been reached by the Nobel committee.
“I was astonished and surprised, delighted. Everything you might expect,” he said.
Ambros said he was looking forward to celebrating soon with his friend.
Ruvkun, Ambros and British geneticist David Baulcombe in 2008 won the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for their research into microRNA. Many recipients go on to win Nobels.