Autophagy is a process by which cellular components are captured into organelles called autophagosomes and then brought to the lysosome or vacuole to be broken down and recycled for other uses. It frequently comes into play during starvation, allowing cells to survive periods of privation.
Ohsumi, born in 1945 in Fukuoka, Japan, has been a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology since 2009.
He received the Kyoto Prize for Basic Science in 2012.
‘Ohsumi's discoveries led to a new paradigm in our understanding of how the cell recycles its content,’ the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute said in a statement.
‘His discoveries opened the path to understanding ... many physiological processes, such as in the adaptation to starvation or response to infection,’ the statement added.
Ohsumi's work on cell breakdown, a field known as autophagy, is important because it can help explain what goes wrong in a range of diseases.
"Mutations in autophagy (self eating) genes can cause disease, and the autophagic process is involved in several conditions including cancer and neurological disease," the statement said.
"I am extremely honoured," he told Kyodo News agency.
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