The 2016 Nobel prize for medicine or physiology has been awarded to Japan’s Yoshinori Ohsumi for research in the field of Autophagy.
ADVERTISEMENTThe 2016 Nobel prize for medicine or physiology has been awarded to Japan’s Yoshinori Ohsumi for research in the field of Autophagy.
In simple terms, Autophagy focuses on how the body’s cells detoxify and repair themselves. In the 1960s, scientists noticed that cells were able to destroy and recycle their contents.
Ohsumi, who identified a set of genes that control autophagy in baker’s yeast, went on to show a similar process at work in humans.
Disrupted autophagy has been linked to Parkinson’s disease, type 2 diabetes and other disorders which appear in the elderly.
BREAKING NEWS The 2016 #NobelPrize#Medicine awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi
tokyotech_en</a> ”for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy” <a href="https://t.co/PDxWbSqoIX">pic.twitter.com/PDxWbSqoIX</a></p>— The Nobel Prize (NobelPrize) October 3, 2016
The award was announced at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute. It is the 107th award in the category since the first Nobel Prizes were handed out 1905.