Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years. Yacold also

partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for

gut health, an investigator-led research program. To learn more about Yachtold, visit yacult.co.

.jp. That's Y-A started by catching up on some of the latest

science news. For Scientific Americans Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feldman.

The winners of the 2024 Nobel Prizes were announced last week, so let's start with a quick

little laureate rundown. Last Monday, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to

Victor Ambrose and Gary Rovkin for the quote, discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional

gene regulation. The small snippets of RNA molecules known as microRNA help control how our genes are expressed.

Here's a little primer for context. DNA is, of course, the molecule that carries our genetic code.

RNA, which is short for ribonucleic acid, is chemically similar to DNA, but it usually comes in a single strand instead of that iconic little

double helix.

The molecules also serve different biological functions.

DNA stays put within the nucleus of our cells, but it sends out strands of RNA with some

of its genetic code so that those instructions can actually get relayed to the parts of

the cell that make proteins. Messenger RNA, which MRNA, which got a nod in last year's Nobel Prize in this category,

thanks to its use in COVID vaccines, is the type of RNA that actually carries these protein-coding instructions.

MicroRNA helps control gene expression by binding with messenger RNA and keeping it from delivering

its protein production message.

Let's keep moving right along to the Nobel Prize in Physics, which went to John Hopfield

and Jeffrey Hinton for their work in machine learning.

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