The Tartan

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in Oct. 2024 for their discovery and description of microRNA. Ambros is an American developmental biologist who is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and completed both his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Ruvkun is an American molecular biologist who is a professor of genetics at Harvard University Medical School. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of California Berkeley and his postgraduate degree at Harvard University. Both take an interest in the mechanism of gene activity regulation and its connection to microRNA.

The question that remains is why microRNA is important. The study found that microRNA had a function in gene regulation and its task is complex. Ambros and Ruvkun now understand that “​​cells and tissues do not develop normally without microRNAs.” This was vital in describing their function within multicellular organisms, including the question of why humans produce so much microRNA. It has also been noted that misregulation of microRNA has led to diseases and defects including cancer, hearing loss, and skeletal disorders.

The way that Ambros and Ruvkun discovered microRNA was interesting, especially how they decided to use a 1mm roundworm — a parasite that can affect both humans and animals — as their subject of interest during their initial studies on gene expression and mutations. This roundworm contained all the notable features of a multicellular organism that Ambros and Ruvkun set out to study, specifically specialized cell types (such as muscle and nerve cells) that are also found in larger animals. Using a variety of these worms, they were able to study the effects of mutations and discover a new form of gene regulation that was being mediated by an unknown RNA form, which would eventually come to be known as microRNA.