Cell digestion research wins 2016 Nobel Prize
Professor Yoshinori Ohsumi has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology for his work on autophagy — the degradation and recycling of cellular components.
Professor Yoshinori Ohsumi has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology for his work on autophagy — the degradation and recycling of cellular components.
Autophagy was first discovered in the 1960s, although little was understood about the process. In the early 1990s Dr Ohsumi began experiments to understand autophagy in yeast cells and discovered the genes responsible.
This discovery has enabled scientists to better understand diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s, which occur due to errors found in these genes.
The phrase autophagy was first used by another Nobel Prize winning scientist, Christian de Duve, in 1960.
Here is Professor Ohsumi talking about autophagy in Canada last year.
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