Sebastián Chávez de Diego
Professor at the University of Seville and member of the Gene Expression in Eukaryotes group
The award of the Nobel Prize in Medicine 2024 to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun is a great success for the Swedish Academy. The contributions of Ambros and Ruvkun were a paradigm shift in our view of how the information contained in the genome is controlled, adding a new dimension. It was now revealed that genes were not only regulated by being turned on or off in chromosomes, but that their expression was also controlled by modifying the stability and effects of their immediate products (messenger RNAs).
His identification of small RNA molecules as post-transcriptional regulators revolutionised our understanding of the body development of complex multicellular organisms, such as humans, and was an essential element for understanding cell behaviour in pathological situations such as cancer.