Nobel Prize in Medicine
October 4, 2016
Yesterday, October 3, officials at the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine to Japanese biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi. Ohsumi earned the award for his discoveries on how cells break down and reuse vital substance.
Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)
Ohsumi’s research included studying an organelle called a vacuole in yeast cells. An organelle is a small organlike structure that performs a specialized function within a cell. Within yeast cells, certain specialized vacuoles called lysosomes contain chemicals that break down large food particles for energy and growth. Ohsumi discovered and described how vacuoles also function to break down worn out proteins and nonessential components of cells. The cells can then reuse these substances. In physiology, this process is called autophagy, which comes from the Greek words meaning self-eating.
Yoshinori Ohsumi was born on Feb. 9, 1945, in Fukuoka, on the northwestern part of Kyushu, Japan. He studied cell biology at the University of Tokyo, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1974. After conducting research at Rockefeller University in New York City, he returned to the University of Tokyo and later joined the National Institute for Basic Biology in Okazaki, Japan. Since 2009, Ohsumi has conducted research at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
