Just in: The 2016 Nobel Prize for Medicine awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy. Ohsumi is a Japanese cell biologist specializing in autophagy. He is a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology 's Frontier Research Center. He received the Kyoto Prize for Basic Science in 2012.


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.


The judges for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine are selected by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

This follows specifications made by Alfred Nobel in his 1895 will, which stated which institutions should select the winners. The Royal Swedish Academy of sciences got the physics and chemistry awards and the Swedish Academy got the literature prize.

The peace prize was given to a panel selected by the parliament of neighbouring Norway, which was ruled in union with Sweden at the time.