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A comment on 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Is Awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi [pdf]. Parent comment

Re:2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Is Awarded to ... by cowsandmilk on Monday October 03, 2016 @01:12PM (#12629303)
Why? This is clearly physiology (how living systems function). And physiology is a field of biology. Biology also includes things like the dynamics of ecosystems and classification of organisms.

Physiology is a more descriptive term for this work. You could argue this is "cell biology", but that's just a claim that these fields are exclusive of each other; much modern physiological work is now understanding the underlying molecular processes (maybe it is molecular biology?).

His work on molecular mechanisms has brought better understanding of higher level processes in the body and traditional "physiologic" mechanisms.

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Re:2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Is Awarded to ... by dekhn on Monday October 03, 2016 @01:58PM (#12629734)
This specific prize awards something which is physiology.

I meant that the prize itself should be renamed to biology because physiology is-a biology and the prize often is awarded to things that are biology rather than medicine or physiology which are highly specific.

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