A Nobel for autophagy, and the importance of fundamental research

Yoshinori Ohsumi has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on autophagy, a process of eukaryotic cells for degrading and recycling cellular components. Because of his research, we now understand the importance of autophagy in health and human disease. It is another example of the serendipity of science and yes, it is relevant to virology! The word autophagy was coined by Christian de Duve in 1963 to describe a process that he and others had previously described: when stressed, cells would sequester portions of the cytoplasm in double-membraned vesicles called autophagosomes. These would then fuse with lysosomes (which de Duve had discovered) and the contents were degraded (illustrated; image credit). In subsequent years it was suggested that autophagy might have roles in human disease, but little progress was made on understanding how the process worked: how it was triggered, what proteins were involved, and its function in health and pathogenesis. As a young Assistant Professor at Tokyo University in the early 1990s, Ohsumi found that autophagy occurred in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. He decided to produce yeast strains lacking the proteases that would be involved in digesting the contents of the autophagic vesicles, with the idea that these vesicles would accumulate under stress (under normal conditions the autophagosome exists for a short period of time, making its study difficult). When Ohsumi stressed the yeasts lacking the vacu...
Source: virology blog - Category: Virology Authors: Tags: Basic virology Commentary Information autophagosome autophagy Nobel Prize saccharomyces serendepity of science viral virus viruses yeast Yoshinori Ohsumi Source Type: blogs