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The 2016 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine goes to Yoshinori Ohsumi of Japan for discoveries about autophagy – how the body breaks down and recycles old cellular components, according to the BBC.
Ohsumi's work is important because it helps explain what goes wrong in a range of diseases, from cancer to Parkinson's, the BBC wrote.
He located the genes that regulate this "self-eating" process.
Read alsoShimon Peres, former Israeli president, dies aged 93 - BBCErrors in these genes can cause disease.
Last year's prize was shared by three scientists who developed treatments for malaria and other tropical diseases.