Yoshinori Ohsumi - Nobel Prize Winner In Physiology Or Medicine, 2016

No matter how many awards are there for encouraging new discoveries and innovations, the Nobel Prize is still the biggest achievement one can get.

Nobel Prize still matters

Every year, the Nobel Prize is awarded for outstanding contributions in Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Economic Sciences and "Physiology or Medicine." Each prize is worth:

Almost $1.2 million (or, nearly 8 crores INR). But the Prize is more than just the money. It's the fruition of one's hard work. You can read more about the Nobel Prize here in Wikipedia.

Although I know the names of those who got the Nobel Prize this year, I can only talk about the "Physiology or Medicine" segment as I'm a Physiology student.

The man you see in the above picture Yoshinori Ohsumi. He is a Japanese scientist. As you already know from the title of this post, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in "Physiology or Medicine, 2016." You'll find little bit details about his work below with links to his research papers.

Know about his research

He demonstrated the process of Autophagy or Autophagocytosis in yeast cells. Mutant yeast cells without Carboxyboxypeptidase Y, Proteinase A and B were used to describe the mechanism of vacuolar proteolysis. Culture mediums free from any protein and nutrient were used to incubate and grow them. After few hours, the vacuoles were completely packed by some spherical bodies. The spherical bodies:

They were termed as "autophagic bodies." These bodies were found to have mitochondria, rough endoplasmic reticulum, ribosomes, similar to that of cytosol. So, these bodies seized the cytosol from the vacuoles.

What's Autophagocytosis then?

As you all know, autophagocytosis:

It is the natural process of the cell to destroy non-functioning components. In this case, the vacuoles became non-functional for the absence of proteins (Nitrogen, amino acids) and other nutrients in the culture media. As a result, they were destroyed by those autophagic bodies.

You'll find many articles on the internet describing this process with a lot more detail. But I wanted to make you understand in simpler terms. Was I successful? Let me know in the comments below.

Click his name for his research papers and publications - "Yoshinori Ohsumi."