Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize - 2009

>Home

Gary Ruvkun, Ph.D.

Gary Ruvkun is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.  His lab uses C. elegans molecular genetics and genomics to study problems in developmental biology and physiology.   Dr. Ruvkun is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard.  Dr. Ruvkun began to work with C. elegans as a postdoc with Bob Horvitz at MIT and Walter Gilbert at Harvard, where he explored the heterochronic genes that control the temporal dimension of development in a collaborative study with Victor Ambros.  The work led to the discovery of the first microRNA gene by the Ambros lab, and that the mechanism of microRNA regulation of target mRNAs is post-transcriptional by the Ruvkun lab.   A few years later the Ruvkun lab found the second microRNA gene, let-7 and showed that this microRNA gene is conserved across animal phylogeny.   Dr. Ruvkun’s lab is now using functional genomic and genetic strategies to systematically discover the components of the RNAi and microRNA pathways in C. elegans.   Most of the genes identified in these screens are conserved across eukaryotic phylogeny, suggesting universality of these 21-22 nucleotide pathways.  Some of these components may be developed as drug targets to enhance RNAi in mammals, a technical improvement that may be necessary to elevate a laboratory tool to a therapeutic modality.   Dr. Ruvkun’s lab has also discovered that C. elegans uses an insulin signaling pathway to control its metabolism and longevity.  The molecular genetic dissection of the insulin pathway has also been important for understanding and treating diabetes, a disease of insulin signaling deficits.  The new genes of the insulin pathway that have emerged from these studies represent new targets for diabetes drug development.