Scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine at noon Monday.

According to a statement from the committee that awarded the Nobel, the prize is given for the discovery of microRNA and its role in gene regulation.

The two scientists discovered a regulatory mechanism used in cells to control gene activity.

Genetic information flows from DNA to messenger RNA (mRNA), through a process called transcription, and then into the cellular engineering to produce proteins. There, the mRNA is translated so that proteins are produced according to the genetic instructions stored in the DNA. Since the mid-20th century, several of the most fundamental scientific discoveries have explained how these processes work.