Gary Ruvkun, Victor Ambros and David Baulcombe have been announced as the winners of the 2008 Lasker Award for their pioneering work on microRNAs (miRNAs) and their discoveries about how these very small strands of RNA regulate gene activity. MicroRNAs, first found in the tiny roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans and plants, are now believed to control about one-third of all human genes. MicroRNA misregulation appears to play an important role in a variety of human diseases, including cancer, diabetes and cardiac failure. For the full text of the Lasker Foundation Award, see the Lasker web site at: http://www.laskerfoundation.org/awards/2008_b_description.htm.

Gary Ruvkun was also honored earlier this year by the 2008 Gairdner Award for his work with miRNAs. He started his work on miRNAs and their target mRNA genes in 1982, and has since published numerous papers on their role in gene regulation. His papers revealed an unexpected world of RNAs regulating RNAs, which goes against the so called "central dogma" of biology in which RNAs were believed to act only as information transporters.

Dr. Ruvkun was also the recipient of a number of other honors in the past year. In April, the National Academy of Sciences elected him to membership in the Academy at their 145th annual meeting. In addition, he was the recipient of the 2008 Warren Triennial Prize, given by the Massachusetts General Hospital, and of the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science, awarded by the Franklin Institute each year.

A multi-institutional team led by Keith Joung of the CCIB has developed a powerful new tool for genomic research: a robust method for generating synthetic enzymes that can target particular DNA sequences for inactivation or repair. In the July 25 issue of Molecular Cell, the researchers describe an efficient method to engineer customized zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs), which can be used to induce specific genomic modifications in many types of cells.

“Recent work has shown that ZFNs can alter genes with high efficiency in cells from plants or model organisms like fruitflies, roundworms and zebrafish, and in human cells,” says J. Keith Joung, MD, PhD, the paper’s senior author. “However, a significant bottleneck has been the lack of access to an effective method for generating the customized DNA-binding domains needed to guide ZFNs to their target sites. Our method will enable academic researchers to rapidly create high-quality ZFNs for genes of interest and stimulate use of this technology in biological research and gene therapy.”

Zinc-finger peptides occur in many proteins that regulate or otherwise interact with DNA. Current methods for generating ZFNs are either inefficient or involve constructing and analyzing huge libraries of zinc-finger peptides, a task that exceeds the capabilities of all but a handful of laboratories in the world. Click here to link to the press release.

Jack Szostak of the CCIB, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, has been awarded the 2008 Heineken Prize by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences for his original contributions to our understanding of the fundamental processes of life.

The Academy recognizes that he "has been responsible for a series of scientific breakthroughs. Each discovery has concerned the fundamental processes of life and evolution. For example, he is one of the forefathers of today's genetic research with 'knockout mice', genetically engineered mice in which one or more genes have been turned off. This method, which has played a major role in many areas of biomedical research, can be traced back to the early 1980s, when Szostak first aired his revolutionary ideas about the crucial function of telomeres, the specialised DNA sequences at the tips of chromosomes, in cell division. "

Dr. Szostak was also awarded the 2006 Lasker Award for his accomplishments in basic medical research for his work in the prediction and discovery of telomerase.