The 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded for discovering which class of biological molecule?
- microRNA — post-transcriptional gene regulators
- CRISPR-Cas9 — gene editing enzymes
- Telomerase — enzyme that extends chromosome ends
- Ribozymes — RNA molecules with enzymatic activity
Answer: microRNA — short RNA molecules that regulate gene expression after transcription
Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun discovered microRNA while studying C. elegans roundworms in the early 1990s. They found that the lin-4 gene produces a short RNA molecule (not a protein) that switches off another gene by binding to its messenger RNA. This post-transcriptional regulation mechanism was later found to be universal across animals, including humans.