Congratulations to Yoshinori Ohsumi

Warmest congratulations to Yoshinori Ohsumi, 2016 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, “for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy”.  Autophagy (self-eating) is a process through which cells selectively degrade and recycle cellular components. Ohsumi’s research has primarily focused on yeast, but he has also studied autophagy in plants. In fact, for the past twenty years  Professor Ohsumi has chosen to publish his work in The Plant Cell and Plant Physiology. Here you can see some of his contributions to the study of autophagy in plants.

Autophagy in Tobacco Suspension-Cultured Cells in Response to Sucrose Starvation (1996). Y. Moriyasu and Y. Ohsumi. Plant Physiol. 111: 1233–1241.

Leaf Senescence and Starvation-Induced Chlorosis Are Accelerated by the Disruption of an Arabidopsis Autophagy Gene (2002). Hideki Hanaoka, Takeshi Noda, Yumiko Shirano, Tomohiko Kato, Hiroaki Hayashi, Daisuke Shibata, Satoshi Tabata, and Yoshinori Ohsumi. Plant Physiol. 129: 1181–1193.

Processing of ATG8s, Ubiquitin-Like Proteins, and Their Deconjugation by ATG4s Are Essential for Plant Autophagy (2004). Kohki Yoshimoto, Hideki Hanaoka, Shusei Sato, Tomohiko Kato, Satoshi Tabata, Takeshi Noda, and Yoshinori Ohsumi. Plant Cell 16: 2967–2983.

An Arabidopsis Homolog of Yeast ATG6/VPS30 Is Essential for Pollen Germination (2007). Yuki Fujiki, Kohki Yoshimoto, and Yoshinori Ohsumi. Plant Physiol. 143: 1132–1139.

Mobilization of Rubisco and Stroma-Localized Fluorescent Proteins of Chloroplasts to the Vacuole by an ATG Gene-Dependent Autophagic Process (2008). Hiroyuki Ishida, Kohki Yoshimoto, Masanori Izumi, Daniel Reisen, Yuichi Yano, Amane Makino, Yoshinori Ohsumi, Maureen R. Hanson, and Tadahiko Mae. Plant Physiol. 148: 142–155.

Autophagy Plays a Role in Chloroplast Degradation during Senescence in Individually Darkened Leaves (2009). Shinya Wada, Hiroyuki Ishida, Masanori Izumi, Kohki Yoshimoto, Yoshinori Ohsumi, Tadahiko Mae, and Amane Makino. Plant Physiol. 149: 885–893.

Autophagy Negatively Regulates Cell Death by Controlling NPR1-Dependent Salicylic Acid Signaling during Senescence and the Innate Immune Response in Arabidopsis (2009). Kohki Yoshimoto, Yusuke Jikumaru, Yuji Kamiya, Miyako Kusano, Chiara Consonni, Ralph Panstruga, Yoshinori Ohsumi, and Ken Shirasu. Plant Cell 21: 2914–2927.

Highly Oxidized Peroxisomes Are Selectively Degraded via Autophagy in Arabidopsis (2013). Michitaro Shibata, Kazusato Oikawa, Kohki Yoshimoto, Maki Kondo, Shoji Mano, Kenji Yamada, Makoto Hayashi, Wataru Sakamoto, Yoshinori Ohsumi, and Mikio Nishimura. Plant Cell 25: 4967–4983.

Professor Ohsumi’s research is also covered in the Teaching Tools in Plant Biology article “The End: Senescence and Cell Death“.

From Ishida et al, 2008, Plant Cell