STOCKHOLM, October 3. /TASS/. The 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine has been awarded to Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy, the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute said on Monday.

"This year's Nobel Laureate discovered and elucidated mechanisms underlying autophagy, a fundamental process for degrading and recycling cellular components," the assembly said in a statement.

"Ohsumi's discoveries led to a new paradigm in our understanding of how the cell recycles its content. His discoveries opened the path to understanding the fundamental importance of autophagy in many physiological processes, such as in the adaptation to starvation or response to infection," the statement says.

Ohsumi was born 1945 in Fukuoka, Japan. He is since 2009 a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

The Nobel Prize is worth 8 million Swedish crowns ($933,000). The awards ceremony will traditionally take place on December 10.