STOCKHOLM — The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded on Monday to two Americans with Massachusetts ties.
Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were awarded the prize for their discovery of microRNA, a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated.
The Nobel Assembly said that their discovery is “proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.”
Ambros is a professor of natural science at UMass Chan Medical School and Ruvkun is a professor at Harvard.
The two started doing post-doctoral research on roundworms together at MIT in the 1980s.
Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 that were critical in slowing the pandemic.
The pair will share the one million dollars that comes with winning the prize.
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