Nordic Life Science 1
PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE // PROFILE G A R Y R U V K
UN AN OUT-OFTHE-BOX THINKER More than three decades after their discovery of microRNA, Professor Gary Ruvkun received the “mythic call” from Stockholm to learn that he’d been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine alongside his erstwhile colleague Victor Ambros. T E X T B Y A L E X A N DR A HOEGBE R G M ERE MINUTES AFTER having received the call from the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet (KI) on October 7, Gary Ruvkun got another call. Adam Smith, chief scientific officer at the Nobel Prize Outreach, gave him a ring to capture his initial thoughts in a “First Reactions” interview. Ruvkun – who’s been described as good natured with a strong sense of humor by people who know him – joked that the call might have been a prank pulled on him by friends. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is being awarded for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation – a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated. California-born Gary Ruvkun is now Professor of Genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He has been working there since 1985, after receiving his PhD from Harvard University and then completing a postdoc at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the early half of the 1980s. As young faculty members, Ruvkun and Victor Ambros were investigating the lin-4 and lin-14 genes in their labs at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Harvard University, respectively. The two researchers, who knew each other since their time as postdoctoral fellows at MIT, came together to compare their findings. After conducting further experiments, they showed that lin-4 RNA turns off lin-14 mRNA by binding to the NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG | 39