诺奖官网对2016年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖得主大隅良典的采访

Telephone Interview with Yoshinori Ohsumi

 

Telephone interview with Yoshinori Ohsumi following the announcement of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 3 October 2016. The interviewer is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer of Nobel Media.

 

Yoshinori Ohsumi (YO): Moshi, Moshi, Yoshinori speaking.

 

Adam Smith (AS): Hello, Professor Ohsumi. My name is Adam Smith. I’m calling from the official website for the Nobel Prize.

 

YO: Ah ha, yeah.

 

AS: First of all, our congratulations on the award of the Nobel Prize.

 

YO: Thank you so much. Yeah, I was surprised.

 

AS: [Laughs] How did you hear the news?

 

YO: I had a call from Thomas Perlmann.

 

AS: Yes, Secretary of the Nobel Committee, yes indeed.

 

YO: Yeah, Nobel Assembly.

 

AS: Nobel Assembly, yes. And where were you when you received the news?

 

YO: I was in my lab.

 

AS: And your first reaction?

 

YO: I heard that, single, only me! It was also a surprise for me.

 

AS: It’s true, because it’s rare that they give the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to just a single Laureate. What do you think this says about the role of the single researcher these days?

 

YO: That’s my real surprise because so many people are now working in the autophagy field.

 

AS: Autophagy is a huge area. But it’s not…it’s not something…

 

YO: Yeah, recently.

 

AS: Recently, exactly.

 

YO: Just recently, I think. Yeah.

 

AS: Very largely because of your work.

 

YO: Yeah, it’s so, developed fast, yeah. When I started my work, probably every year 20 or less papers appeared on autophagy. Now, more than 5,000 or something like that. It’s a huge change within probably these 15 years or so.

 

AS: Yeah, a real explosion.

 

YO: I actually started more than 27 years ago.

 

AS: It was a good choice of field.

 

YO: Yeah, yeah, it was lucky. Yeah, yeast was a very good system and autophagy was a very good topic to work. Still we have so many questions. Yeah, even now, we have more questions than when I started.

 

AS: Once again, it underlines the power of yeast as an experimental model.

 

YO: Yeah.

 

AS: You can do so much with yeast. And does it surprise you how similar yeast is to ourselves?

 

YO: I believe there are fundamental functions of the cells should be conserved from yeast to mammals. So that’s my belief. But, of course, vacuole is different from lysosome, but I thought that most fundamental mechanisms must be conserved. That was my assumption when I started my work.

 

AS: You sound as if you’re still in a slight state of shock.

 

YO: Yeah…mmm.

 

AS: And will you be coming to Stockholm in December to receive your award?

 

YO: Yeah, yeah.

 

AS: Wonderful. Well, we very much look forward to meeting you then and to talking further.

 

YO: OK. Yeah.

 

AS: Thank you very much indeed for speaking to us now.

 

YO: Thanks so much.

 

AS: Congratulations again and we wish you a wonderful day.