Reacción a "Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology awarded to Ambros and Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNAs and their role in gene regulation"

Although all the cells in our bodies contain basically the same genetic information, not all of them express it in the same way, and this process we call ‘regulation of gene expression’ is what allows cells to be different from one another. An epithelial cell and a neuron, for example, do not express the same genes. Nor does a healthy cell express the same genes as a cancer cell. There are many processes going on in the cell that contribute to making these differences possible, involving interactions between molecules.
The interest of the award-winning scientists' research lies in having highlighted the existence of a new mechanism, previously unknown, which is the participation of very small RNA molecules (microRNAs) that control the process through mechanisms that occur once the messenger RNAs, a copy of the information of some genes, have already been synthesised. Recognition between the messenger RNA and the microRNA is very simple, simply because their bases are complementary, but that directs a series of proteins towards that messenger, determining that it can be degraded and its information not expressed in the cell.
MicroRNAs are important tools in the diagnosis of certain types of cancer and have the advantage that they can be detected by liquid biopsy, in blood tests, and in the analysis of the blood. Their discovery has enabled the development of new tools for biological research in all fields. They can also be easily synthesised, which favours their potential therapeutic applications.