Gary Ruvkun
Facts
© Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Clément Morin
Gary Ruvkun
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2024
Born: 1952, Berkeley, CA, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Prize motivation: “for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation”
Prize share: 1/2
Work
Our genome can be likened to an instruction manual for all cells in our body. Every cell contains the same set of instructions. Yet, different cell types have very distinct characteristics. These differences arise from gene regulation, which allows each cell to select only the relevant instructions. In 1993, Gary Ruvkun and Victor Ambros discovered microRNA, a new class of tiny RNA molecules that play a crucial role in gene regulation. This new dimension to gene regulation is fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.
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