Yoshinori Ohsumi awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine
“Japanese biologist
Yoshinori Ohsumi was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday for
discovering and elucidating a key mechanism in our body's defense system that
involves degrading and recycling parts of cells. Known as autophagy, this
process plays an important role in cancer, Alzheimer's, type 2 diabetes, birth
defects from Zika virus and numerous other devastating diseases.
In making the
announcement, the prize committee in Stockholm said the work involves a series
of "brilliant experiments" in the 1990s involving baker's yeast that
have helped explain how a cell, the smallest unit of life, adapts in response
to stresses such as starvation and infection. In studying thousands of yeast mutants,
Ohsumi identified 15 genes essential for autophagy. It turned out that
virtually identical mechanisms exist in human cells as well.”