Africa: Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded to mRNA Researchers

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was jointly awarded to two American scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun their work on microRNA.

The two scientists were awarded for “their discovery of a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated,” the Nobel Foundation said in statement on Monday, October 7.

Their work helped explain how genes work inside the human body and how that gives rise to the different tissues of the human body.

The winners share a prize fund worth 11m Swedish kronor (£810,000).

Every cell in the human body contains the same raw genetic information, locked in our DNA.

But bone cells, nerve cells, skin cells, white blood cells, heart cells and many more each use that genetic code in different highly specialised ways.

The work by the American researchers helps explain how that happens.

The medicine and physiology prize winners are selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.

They said: “Their ground-breaking discovery revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans.

“It is now known that the human genome codes for over one thousand microRNAs.”