American scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Medicine at noon on Monday.
According to the announcement of the Nobel committee, the prize is given for the discovery of microRNA and its role in gene regulation
In its announcement, the committee spoke of a "groundbreaking discovery" that "revealed an entirely new dimension in gene regulation."
The two scientists discovered a regulatory mechanism used in cells to control gene activity.
Genetic information flows from DNA to messenger RNA (mRNA), through a process called transcription, and then to the cellular machinery for protein production. There, mRNAs are translated so that proteins are made according to the genetic instructions stored in DNA. Since the mid-20th century, several of the most fundamental scientific discoveries have explained how these processes work.
Source: protothema.gr