Tamotsu Yoshimori

Tamotsu Yoshimori received his PhD degree in 1989 at Osaka University. After working at several places including European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Prof Kai Simons’ lab) and National Institute of Basic Biology (Prof Yoshinori Ohsumi’s lab), he is now a distinguished professor of Osaka University (Graduate School of Medicine and of Frontier Biosciences). His research interests are focused on intracellular membrane trafficking, and especially for the last 18 years, autophagy. He identified LC3 as an autophagosome-binding protein, which has been widely used as the gold standard in autophagy assays. The paper has been cited over 3,000 times.

He also provided new insights into membrane biogenesis in autophagy and the role of autophagy in pathogen defense and suppression of various diseases. He authored or coauthored over 220 journal articles and book chapters. He is an editor of Journal Cell Science, and on the editorial board of Journal of Cell Biology, Molecular Biology of the Cell, and so on. He is a member of the Faculty of 1000 and a vice president of Japan Society for Cell Biology.

He was awarded Osaka University Presidential Award for 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015, Prize for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for 2013, Kakiuchi SaburoMemorial Prize by the Japanese Biochemical Society for 2014, Uehara Prize for 2015 by the Uehara Memorial Foundation, and selected as Highly Cited Researchers 2014 and 2015 by Thomson Reuters