THE 2016 NOBEL PRIZE. Thomas Nyström, professor of microbiology at the University of Gothenburg researchers on the aging of yeast cells, is very pleased that Yoshinori Ohsumi has won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: “It is wonderful that the prize goes to fundamental molecular biologic researcher and that baker’s yeast, one again, has proven such an appreciated and useful model organism with relevance for human functions and diseases,” comments Thomas Nyström.
Autophagy is a fundamental process for breaking down and reusing the cell’s own components. This year’s Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, Yoshinori Ohsumi, used the same yeast as used by bakers for a series of brilliant experiments where in determined the mechanisms behind autophagy.
Ohsumi’s discoveries have resulted in a paradigm shift in the understanding of how cells break down and reuse cellular material. Today we know that autophagy is a fundamentally important physiological process in the ability of cells to manage malnutrition and infections. Mutations of genes important for autophagy can result in hereditary diseases. Disturbances in the autophagy process can contribute to cancer and neurological diseases, among other things.
Thomas Nyström has previously had the pleasure of meeting Yoshinori Ohsumi in connection with a scientific conference, and he feels that Ohsumi is well-deserving Nobel laureate: “He is the pioneer within autophagy research and figured out the origin of the mechanism for how autophagy works in yeast cells. It was later shown that similar mechanisms are at work in everything from worms to humans and that autophagy is intimately linked to how quickly we and other organisms age. More recently, special interest has been focused on the role of autophagy in diet-based control of aging and in age-related neurological diseases.”
