Yoshinori Ohsumi of Japan on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for his work on autophagy — a process whereby cells “eat themselves” — which when disrupted can cause Parkinson's and diabetes. Autophagy is a fundamental process in cell physiology with major implications for human health and disease. The process is essential for the orderly degradation and recycling of damaged cell parts and its failure is believed to be responsible for ageing and cell damage.
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Japan’s Ohsumi wins Nobel Medicine Prize for work on cell ‘recycling’