First reactions. Telephone interview, October 2024

”A celebration of the way of doing science” 

Victor Ambros speaks about the joy of basic research and the ever-expanding fascination of RNA. Recorded just after he found out about the prize, we also discover how the news was broken to the new laureate by his son, who began with the leading question, “Have you been getting calls from Sweden?”

Interview transcript

Victor Ambros: Hello?

Adam Smith: Hello, am I speaking with Victor Ambros?

VA: You are, morning!

AS: Good morning, very early morning I know, many congratulations on the news!

VA: Thank you, sorry that my phone was in the other room this morning so I didn’t hear any earlier calls.

AS: Not at all, I mean, you haven’t yet spoken with Thomas Perlmann from the Nobel Committee, I guess?

VA: No, I have not.

AS: Did you actually receive the news by being called by a journalist?

VA: I received the news by being called by my son! Yes, a journalist called my son. Right, and so my son called.

AS: That’s a nice call to make to your dad.

VA: I bet, yes!

AS: It must all be a bit bewildering, getting the news just as it’s all breaking, so everybody is all trying to reach you. But if I can ask, what are your initial thoughts?

VA: Well, I mean, my initial thought was great surprise because I had understood the prize to my good friends Craig Mello and Andy Fire for RNAi, I considered that to be an appropriate prize which encompassed microRNAs. I had kind of put the idea aside, although people from time to time do mention, “Oh you might win a Nobel Prize,” but I always dismissed that as, you know, “No, no, no, it’s ok. It’s all been covered, and appropriately.”

AS: Well, this is also the fourth Nobel Prize for the nematode.

VA: Yes, and that gives me incredible pride, and the fact that Ruvkun is the other awardee, is incredible, because Gary is such a good friend. I mean you ask me what my first sense was, it’s surprise, and secondly of course it’s a kind of muted joy because, you know, whenever this kind of thing happens to basic scientists, especially scientists working on the nematode, I think it’s a wonderful thing for everybody doing this kind of work. We see it as a, in a way, as a celebration not really of the particular scientist in this case, but of the way of doing science, you know. Curiosity driven, genetic studies of a complicated phenomenon and what you hope is you’ll learn a little bit more about how the phenomenon works – and it’s always amazing when the findings are new enough to be of interest broadly.

AS: I wondered whether that ability to be on the lookout for new phenomena and really take them seriously and investigate them – that’s a special art – is it something that you think was a particular benefit of having worked with, for instance, David Baltimore for your PhD, Bob Horvitz for your Postdoc. Did that train you in the art of looking for the unexpected?

VA: Yes, yes, very much so. I mean I was fortunate enough to work with a series of fantastic scientists, Bob and David, and before that I worked with a postdoc named Edward Gruberg, and Gruberg was a fantastic mentor and really got me alerted to the fact that you can find out new things doing sort of routine experiments, and he also taught me how to read the literature and therefore train myself to be aware of what’s known and what’s not known, so that you can notice what’s new.

AS: It’s also a celebration of the versatility of RNA this prize isn’t it, I mean, yet again, something unexpected.

VA: Yes, that’s actually very exciting to consider that, you made a really good point. I just got back from a meeting in Ottawa, which is a meeting of the Riboclub, and there was over 500 people there, and they celebrated the formation of RNA Canada, which is the nation wide network of scientists and others promoting research around RNA, or else agriculture, climate change and so forth. We all know that RNA is fascinating, and incredibly versatile. It was, the whole meeting was kind of like a celebration of RNA, especially when I went to the posters, there was poster sessions with young people doing incredibly diverse kinds of work.

AS: I guess today will help to boost that message. I long to know what your son actually said to you when he called you?

VA: (to someone off the phone) Hey Candy, what did Greg say? “Have you been getting calls from Sweden? You should answer the phone,” he said.

AS: That’s nice! Ok, well, thank you very much and once again congratulations.

AS: Bye.

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