Wikinventia — Atlas of discoveries and inventions · Global Age

Discovery of the lysosome and coining of the term 'autophagy' — Christian de Duve

1955 AD · Transmission: Global
BiologyDiscoveryFrench

Christian de Duve, at the Catholic University of Louvain, identifies in 1955 — together with Pressman, Gianetto, Wattiaux, and Appelmans — a new cell organelle while studying enzyme distribution in rat liver tissue fractions: a membrane-bound particle containing hydrolytic enzymes active at acidic pH, functioning as the cell's digestive "stomach". He names it the 'lysosome'. Years later, at the Ciba Foundation Symposium on Lysosomes (London, February 12-14, 1963), de Duve coins in a single session the terms 'autophagy', 'endocytosis', and 'exocytosis', and persuades Novikoff to rename his 'cytolysomes' as 'autophagic vacuoles'. He receives the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1974, shared with Albert Claude and George E. Palade, for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell.

InstitutionCatholic University of Louvain
Historical regionBelgium
Primary sourcede Duve, C., Pressman, B.C., Gianetto, R., Wattiaux, R., Appelmans, F. — "Tissue Fractionation Studies. 6. Intracellular Distribution Patterns of Enzymes in Rat-Liver Tissue". Biochemical Journal 60 (1955), 604–617.
Secondary sourcede Duve, C. — "The Lysosome Concept". In Ciba Foundation Symposium on Lysosomes, De Reuck A., Cameron M.P. (eds.), J. & A. Churchill, London, 1963, pp. 1–31 (coining of 'autophagy', 'endocytosis', 'exocytosis').
Original languageEnglish
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