Guillermo Peris Ripollés
Full Professor at the Universitat Jaume I and bioinformatician of the Transposable Elements in Development and Disease group led by Dr. Sara H. Heras, at the GENYO Genomics and Oncology Center in Granada
This year's Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNAs. These RNA sequences play a fundamental role in gene expression, i.e. in which genes or DNA sequences are transcribed into RNA and translated into protein in each cell, giving a specific function to each cell type. It is called post-transcriptional regulation because, unlike other epigenetic mechanisms that also regulate gene expression, such as DNA methylation, it occurs after it has been transcribed from DNA to RNA.
The name microRNA comes from the fact that they are very small sequences, only 22 nucleotides, but their potential in the cell is enormous. In fact, increases or decreases in their expression are associated with various diseases. I am particularly excited about this award because in our research group we study how microRNA deregulation affects various diseases, such as tumors, and more specifically a rare disease, the 22q11 syndrome, in which a very important gene for the manufacture of these sequences is lost.