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The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi, PhD, for his discoveries related to autophagy.
The concept of autophagy emerged during the 1960s, but little was known about the process until the early 1990s.
That’s when Dr Ohsumi used yeast cells to identify genes essential for autophagy. He cloned several of these genes in yeast and mammalian cells and described the function of the encoded proteins.
According to The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, Dr Ohsumi’s discoveries opened the path to understanding the fundamental importance of autophagy in many physiological processes.
The man
Dr Ohsumi was born in 1945 in Fukuoka, Japan. He received a PhD from University of Tokyo in 1974.
After spending 3 years at Rockefeller University in New York, he returned to the University of Tokyo, where he established his research group in 1988. Since 2009, he has been a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
The research
The Belgian scientist Christian de Duve coined the term autophagy in 1963. However, the process was still not well understood when Dr Ohsumi began his research on autophagy.
In the early 1990s, Dr Ohsumi decided to study autophagy using the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisae as a model system.
He was not sure whether autophagy existed in this organism. However, he reasoned that, if it did, and he could disrupt the degradation process in the vacuole while autophagy was active, autophagosomes should accumulate within the vacuole.
Dr Ohsumi cultured mutated yeast lacking vacuolar degradation enzymes and simultaneously stimulated autophagy by starving the cells.
Within hours, the vacuoles were filled with small vesicles that had not been degraded. The vesicles were autophagosomes, and the experiment proved that autophagy exists in yeast cells.
The experiment also provided a method to identify and characterize genes involved in autophagy.
Dr Ohsumi noted that the accumulation of autophagosomes should not occur if genes important for autophagy were inactivated.
So he exposed the yeast cells to a chemical that randomly introduced mutations in many genes, and then he induced autophagy. In this way, he identified 15 genes essential for autophagy in budding yeast.
In his subsequent studies, Dr Ohsumi cloned several of these genes in yeast and mammalian cells and characterized the function of the proteins encoded by these genes.
He found that autophagy is controlled by a cascade of proteins and protein complexes, each regulating a distinct stage of autophagosome initiation and formation.
Insights provided by Dr Ohsumi’s work enabled subsequent research that has revealed the role of autophagy in human physiology and disease.
For more information on Dr Ohsumi and his work, visit the Nobel Prize website. 
Photo by Mari Honda
The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi, PhD, for his discoveries related to autophagy.
The concept of autophagy emerged during the 1960s, but little was known about the process until the early 1990s.
That’s when Dr Ohsumi used yeast cells to identify genes essential for autophagy. He cloned several of these genes in yeast and mammalian cells and described the function of the encoded proteins.
According to The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, Dr Ohsumi’s discoveries opened the path to understanding the fundamental importance of autophagy in many physiological processes.
The man
Dr Ohsumi was born in 1945 in Fukuoka, Japan. He received a PhD from University of Tokyo in 1974.
After spending 3 years at Rockefeller University in New York, he returned to the University of Tokyo, where he established his research group in 1988. Since 2009, he has been a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
The research
The Belgian scientist Christian de Duve coined the term autophagy in 1963. However, the process was still not well understood when Dr Ohsumi began his research on autophagy.
In the early 1990s, Dr Ohsumi decided to study autophagy using the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisae as a model system.
He was not sure whether autophagy existed in this organism. However, he reasoned that, if it did, and he could disrupt the degradation process in the vacuole while autophagy was active, autophagosomes should accumulate within the vacuole.
Dr Ohsumi cultured mutated yeast lacking vacuolar degradation enzymes and simultaneously stimulated autophagy by starving the cells.
Within hours, the vacuoles were filled with small vesicles that had not been degraded. The vesicles were autophagosomes, and the experiment proved that autophagy exists in yeast cells.
The experiment also provided a method to identify and characterize genes involved in autophagy.
Dr Ohsumi noted that the accumulation of autophagosomes should not occur if genes important for autophagy were inactivated.
So he exposed the yeast cells to a chemical that randomly introduced mutations in many genes, and then he induced autophagy. In this way, he identified 15 genes essential for autophagy in budding yeast.
In his subsequent studies, Dr Ohsumi cloned several of these genes in yeast and mammalian cells and characterized the function of the proteins encoded by these genes.
He found that autophagy is controlled by a cascade of proteins and protein complexes, each regulating a distinct stage of autophagosome initiation and formation.
Insights provided by Dr Ohsumi’s work enabled subsequent research that has revealed the role of autophagy in human physiology and disease.
For more information on Dr Ohsumi and his work, visit the Nobel Prize website.
Photo by Mari Honda
The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi, PhD, for his discoveries related to autophagy.
The concept of autophagy emerged during the 1960s, but little was known about the process until the early 1990s.
That’s when Dr Ohsumi used yeast cells to identify genes essential for autophagy. He cloned several of these genes in yeast and mammalian cells and described the function of the encoded proteins.
According to The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, Dr Ohsumi’s discoveries opened the path to understanding the fundamental importance of autophagy in many physiological processes.
The man
Dr Ohsumi was born in 1945 in Fukuoka, Japan. He received a PhD from University of Tokyo in 1974.
After spending 3 years at Rockefeller University in New York, he returned to the University of Tokyo, where he established his research group in 1988. Since 2009, he has been a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
The research
The Belgian scientist Christian de Duve coined the term autophagy in 1963. However, the process was still not well understood when Dr Ohsumi began his research on autophagy.
In the early 1990s, Dr Ohsumi decided to study autophagy using the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisae as a model system.
He was not sure whether autophagy existed in this organism. However, he reasoned that, if it did, and he could disrupt the degradation process in the vacuole while autophagy was active, autophagosomes should accumulate within the vacuole.
Dr Ohsumi cultured mutated yeast lacking vacuolar degradation enzymes and simultaneously stimulated autophagy by starving the cells.
Within hours, the vacuoles were filled with small vesicles that had not been degraded. The vesicles were autophagosomes, and the experiment proved that autophagy exists in yeast cells.
The experiment also provided a method to identify and characterize genes involved in autophagy.
Dr Ohsumi noted that the accumulation of autophagosomes should not occur if genes important for autophagy were inactivated.
So he exposed the yeast cells to a chemical that randomly introduced mutations in many genes, and then he induced autophagy. In this way, he identified 15 genes essential for autophagy in budding yeast.
In his subsequent studies, Dr Ohsumi cloned several of these genes in yeast and mammalian cells and characterized the function of the proteins encoded by these genes.
He found that autophagy is controlled by a cascade of proteins and protein complexes, each regulating a distinct stage of autophagosome initiation and formation.
Insights provided by Dr Ohsumi’s work enabled subsequent research that has revealed the role of autophagy in human physiology and disease.
For more information on Dr Ohsumi and his work, visit the Nobel Prize website.