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Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for their discovery of microRNA, which is a fundamental principle that governs how gene activity is regulated.
The Nobel Assembly said that their discovery is “proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.”
Ambrose performed the research that led to his prize at Harvard University. He is currently a professor of natural science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Rackham’s research was performed at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School, where he’s a professor of genetics, said Thomas Perlmann, Secretary-General of the Nobel Committee.
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If gene regulation goes awry, it can lead to serious diseases such as cancer, diabetes or auto-immune illnesses.
“Their groundbreaking discovery revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans,” the jury said.
Ruvkun said he was shocked to win the prestigious prize.
“It’s quite a sea change. I’ve won other awards in the past, but those were very quiet in comparison,” the 72-year-old professor at Harvard Medical School told AFP after receiving the news in a call from the prize committee in the early hours of Monday.
“There’s already been TV crews and photographers, and 300 email messages from friends!” he said, as his dog barked at the front door with more reporters arriving.
Ruvkun shared that he and Ambros are “buddies” and had a congratulatory video call that morning.
“We just FaceTimed to high-five. We’ve been friends for years.”
Ruvkun told Swedish public radio SR that he looked forward to the Nobel gala banquet on December 10 in Stockholm, where the laureates will receive their prizes from the hands of Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf.
“It’s a party. You don’t think of a bunch of scientists as party animals but we really are,” he said.
Ruvkun told AFP the pair would be “celebrating like crazy,” praising Ambros as “always positive and wonderful.”
The Nobel committee failed to reach Ambros by telephone to give him the news. He heard it instead from an SR reporter who called.
“Wow, that’s incredible! I didn’t know that,” the 70-year-old professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School said, adding, “Good. Wonderful.”
Collaborating but working separately, Ruvkun and Ambros researched a one-millimetre roundworm, C. elegans, to determine why cell mutations occurred and when.
Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 that were critical in slowing the pandemic.
The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.
The announcement launched this year’s Nobel prizes award season.
Nobel announcements continue with the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Oct. 14.
The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
