Nobel winners find tiny genetic switch

Boston - Harvard geneticist Gary Ruvkun vividly remembers the late-night phone call with his long-time friend and now 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine co-laureate Victor Ambros, when they made their groundbreaking discovery of genetic switches that exist across the tree of life.

It was the early 1990s. The pair, who had bonded over their fascination with an obscure species of roundworm, were exchanging data points at 11 pm - one of the rare moments Ambros could steal away from tending to his newborn baby.

“It just fit together like puzzle pieces,” Ruvkun said in an interview from his home in Boston suburb. “It was a eureka moment.”

What they had uncovered was microRNA: tiny genetic molecules that act as key regulators of development in animals and plants and hold the promise of breakthroughs in treating a wide range of diseases in the years ahead.

Although these molecules are only 22 “letters” long - compared to the thousands of lines of code in regular protein-coding genes - their small size belies their critical role as molecular gatekeepers.