Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize - 2009

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Victor Ambros, Ph.D.

Victor Ambros grew up in Vermont and graduated from MIT in 1975. He did his graduate research (1976-1979) with David Baltimore at MIT, studying poliovirus genome structure and replication. He began to study the genetic pathways controlling developmental timing in the nematode C. elegans as a postdoc in H. Robert Horvitz's lab at MIT, and continued those studies while on the faculty of Harvard (1984-1992), Dartmouth (1992-2007) and the University of Massachusetts, Medical School (2008-present). In 1993, Ambros and co-workers Rosalind Lee and Rhonda Feinbaum identified the first microRNA, the product of the heterochronic gene lin-4 in C. elegans. Currently, the chief research interest of the Ambros lab is understanding the roles of microRNA-mediated regulatory pathways in animal development and human disease.