Japan's Yoshinori Ohsumi won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Medicine for ground-breaking experiments with yeast which exposed a key mechanism in the body's defences where cells degrade and recycle their components.
Understanding the science behind the process, called "autophagy" or "self-eating", has led to a better understanding of diseases such as cancer, Parkinson's and type-2 diabetes, the prize committee said in its statement on Monday.
"Ohsumi's discoveries led to a new paradigm in our understanding of how the cell recycles its content," it said. The physiology or medicine prize, the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each year, is worth 8 million Swedish crowns ($933,000).
Ohsumi, born in 1945 in Fukuoka, Japan, has been a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology since 2009. He told Kyodo News agency he was "extremely honoured" to get the prize. In a separate interview with broadcaster NHK, he said he had "always wanted to do something that other people wouldn't do".
"I thought the breakdown (of cells) would be interesting, and that was my start," he said.
Prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were first awarded in 1901 in accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel.
NOBEL PRIZE 2016 MEDICINE
Yoshinori Ohsumi Born: 1945, Fukuoka, Japan
Affiliation at the time of the award: Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
Prize motivation: "for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy"
Prize share: 1/1
NOBEL PRIZE 2016 MEDICINE
Yoshinori Ohsumi Born: 1945, Fukuoka, Japan
Affiliation at the time of the award: Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
Prize motivation: "for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy"
Prize share: 1/1
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