The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine awarded to Japanese microbiologist Yoshinori Ohsumi, while reminding us of the importance of basic research, should serve as a warning against the government's current policy on scientific research and the research environment in this country. The scholar himself has expressed "a sense of crisis" over the situation surrounding younger researchers increasingly under pressure to produce quick results useful for practical purposes — an environment that may not be conducive to "paradigm shifting" research like Ohsumi's in the future.
The 71-year-old honorary professor of the Tokyo Institute of Technology was given the award for his work in unlocking the key mysteries of autophagy, a process that helps the body remove unwanted proteins. He is credited with finding out the mechanisms that allow cells to break down and recycle unwanted components, and his discovery is hoped to aid in the fight against diseases such as cancer, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. "Autophagy has been known for over 50 years, but its fundamental importance in physiology and medicine was only recognized" after Ohsumi's research, the Nobel committee said in its citation.
In a series of experiment in the early 1990s, Ohsumi used baker's yeast to identify genes essential for autophagy and went on to elucidate the underlying mechanisms for the process in yeast and showed that similar sophisticated machinery is used in our cells, the Nobel committee said. His discoveries "led to a new paradigm in our understanding of how the cell recycles its content" and "opened the path to understanding the fundamental importance of autophagy in many physiological processes," it said.