LSIPR 50 2017: Yoshinori Ohsumi

Name: Yoshinori Ohsumi

Organisation: Institute of Innovative Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology

Position: Specially appointed professor

Yoshinori Ohsumi is no stranger to awards and recognition. In 2016, Ohsumi won the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for his research in autophagy, the recycling system that cells use to generate nutrients from their own inessential or damaged components.

Before that, he was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery and explanation of mechanisms underlying autophagy (self-cannibalisation).

According to the Nobel Assembly, Ohsumi’s discoveries led to a “new paradigm” in the understanding of how cells recycle their content.

“His discoveries opened the path to understanding the fundamental importance of autophagy in many physiological processes, such as in the adaptation to starvation or response to infection,” said the assembly.

Ohsumi was the first person in the world to visually observe the function of autophagy, initially studying yeasts.

But he soon concluded that the phenomenon of autophagy was not confined to yeasts, and is one of the most basic cell functions found in a variety of organisms, from plants right up to humans.

After earning his doctor of science in physiology from the graduate school of science at the University of Tokyo, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Rockefeller University in the US.

He then returned to the University of Tokyo, working first as a research associate and then as a lecturer in the faculty of science.

Ohsumi first became involved in autophagy in 1988, when he was appointed as associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo. This was the first laboratory he ran.

Since then, Ohsumi has held a number of positions, and currently serves as honorary professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and specially appointed professor at the Institute of Innovative Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology.