The Nobel Prize in Medicine honors two pioneers of gene regulation by very small RNAs

It is a crucial mechanism in the functioning of cells that the Nobel committee highlighted on Monday October 7: the control of gene activity by very small molecules, called “micro-RNA”. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine rewards two pioneering American biologists in the field: Victor Ambros, 70, and Gary Ruvkun, 72.

Both come from this Nobel nursery that is home to the prestigious universities, concentrated around Boston, in Massachusetts. Victor Ambros, now at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, conducted his award-winning research at Harvard. Gary Ruvkun carried out his work at the Massachusetts General Hospital and at Harvard Medical School, where he is still a professor of genetics.

We must understand the fundamental importance of these processes for controlling gene activity. They are what allow our cells to carry out their myriad of specialized functions, within the different tissues of our body: for example, the absorption of nutrients by the cells lining the intestine; the “firing” of certain neurons in response to specific stimuli; the secretion of insulin by pancreatic cells; or even the contraction of muscle cells…

Let us recall here how a “classic” gene operates, that is to say a gene which delivers instructions for the cellular machinery to manufacture proteins, these elementary building blocks which form the structure of cells and ensure their functions. First step, the DNA sequence (the sequence of DNA letters) written in each gene serves as a mold for the production of a complementary molecule, messenger RNA (a nucleic acid, like DNA). The second step is just as crucial: each messenger RNA is then “translated” into a specific protein, according to a genetic code which earned the Nobel Prize for its three discoverers, Robert Holley, Har Gobind Khorana and Marshall Nirenberg, in 1968.

Model organism

“It has long been believed that gene activity is controlled, essentially, during the transcription stage, when messenger RNA is produced from the DNA sequence of genes”explains Marie-Anne Félix, CNRS research director at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. It will be the full merit of Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, the duo awarded today, to reveal the importance of a completely different pathway: that of micro-RNAs, which are also nucleic acids, but of very small size. – only about twenty chemical letters.

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