STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Cellular biology researcher Yoshinori Ohsumi won the 2016 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his work on cell renewal, the organization announced Monday.
Ohsumi, 71, discovered and explained the natural effects of autophagy, a process by which a cell could destroy its own contents by enclosing it in a membrane, then essentially recycle it for degradation. Little was known of the mechanism until Ohsuni's experiments with yeast cells in the 1990s in which he demonstrated the phenomenon. He went on to elucidate similarities in the workings in human cellular structure.