Yesterday, October 7, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was announced. This time the winners were Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for him microRNA discovery and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation. Although both began their research together while they were postdocs in the same laboratory, the results that led to the Nobel Prize were obtained separately, in two related but different studies. It is logical that more people signed up for these studies. Not everyone can win a Nobel Prize, especially since not everyone who signed the study contributed equally to its development. The problem is that Ambrose’s study has a first author who was not considered for the award: Rosalind Lee.
As the first author, it is clear that her research work had an important influence on the results. However, his name was not among those awarded. It’s inevitable to think about it Pierre and Marie Curieas it turned out, Rosalind Lee is the wife of Victor Ambrose. However, while Pierre Curie once refused to accept the Nobel Prize in Physics, except in the company of Marie, who was involved in research at exactly the same level as him, Ambrose does not appear to have done the same.
This does not mean that Victor Ambros does not deserve the Nobel Prize in Medicine. It’s true that it all started when he and Ruvkun were postdocs. However, one inevitably has to think that women’s names, as always, are not taken into account as much as men’s. Rosalind Lee may have joined the investigation later, but her role was is critical to the final conclusion.
Women left without reward
The history of Nobel Prizes is full of women who should have received it, but instead it was won by a man in their circle.
The case of the other Rosalind is well known: chemical Rosalind Franklin. In 1952, she was the author of the photograph with which James Watson and Francis Crick were able to discover the double helix shape of the DNA molecule. However, the Nobel Prize in Medicine went to the two of them and Maurice Wilkins, the man who showed Watson the photograph behind Franklin. However, when the award was presented, she died of cancer resulting from working with X-rays. However, no one awarded her any award. Even in his memory.
Her case is one of the first that comes to mind when we think about the injustices committed by the Nobel Committee against women. However, there were others before, such as Lise Meitner. In 1938, Meitner led the work that led to the discovery of nuclear fission. However, its director Otto Hahn received the Nobel Prize in Physics.
He was also to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics. Jocelyn Bell. In 1967, he analyzed data from the radioscope he was using for his doctoral dissertation and discovered an anomalous signal. He had to convince his dissertation supervisor several times that they were dealing with something that had never been described. It took him a long time to take her seriously. When he finally did, news of the discovery of the first pulsar spread like wildfire all the way to the Nobel Assembly. But the prize was not given to Bell, but to the dissertation supervisor who ignored him: Anthony Hewish.
The Case of Rosalind Lee and the Nobel Prize in Medicine
Total from 1901 to 2023 901 men and 65 women. The imbalance is more than obvious. The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to 13 women, in Physics – 5, in Chemistry – 8, in Peace – 19, in Literature – 17, and in Economics – only 3. The Nobel Prize in Medicine could already have 14 winners if Rosalind Lee was taken into account, but this was not the case. She is the first on the list of authors of the study, but her contribution was not taken into account when awarding the Nobel Prize.
Two Nobel Prize winners in medicine began their research generally, searching for the mechanisms that cells use to turn genes on or off depending on whether they are needed or not. Thus, they discovered a gene in a laboratory worm model that somehow regulated the expression of another. The first one is known as lin-4 and the second one as lin-14.
At the end of the postdoctoral internship, each settled in his own laboratory and continued research independently. Ambrose worked closely with Rosalind Leigh. Together, they discovered that lin-4 produced a very interesting RNA molecule. It did not contain instructions for the synthesis of any protein, as was usually the case with RNA known up to that time. And what’s more, it was a much smaller piece of RNA than usual. They realized that this molecule prevents the formation of proteins from lin-14. I silenced the gene.
This is how microRNA was discovered and, together with Ruvkun, its role in the regulation of gene expression. Therefore, the role of Rosalind Lee was of great importance for the discovery.
The Nobel Assembly itself showed yesterday on its social networks that Ambros and Li are together and happy to accept the news. It seems she holds no grudge against those who decided that only her husband deserves this award. But from now on we want to give him at least a small part of the recognition he deserves. And we again wonder why women continue to be the exception among Nobel Prize winners. This gives more and more reasons for thought.
Source: Hiper Textual
