The term "autophagy" can be translated as "self eating," and was first named by scientists studying cell behavior in the 1960s oeriod. At the same time, researchers in the cell and molecular biology found a cell could destroy part of its own contents by transporting it to another section called the lysosome  for degradation. However, Ohsumi showed that the lysosome "wasn't a waste dump but it was a recycling plant."

Ohsumi  observed that you could bring on baker’s yeast cells to create autophagy vesicles under low nutrient conditions. This  gave scientists the first acting  method for dominating and studying the process. In addition,  Ohsumi studied mutant yeast below the light microscope, one cell at a time, to figure out which genes were involved in it.

Now Ohsumi is the father of this field, “It is a really well-deserved prize.”

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https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2016/ohsumi-facts.html