常時英心:言葉の森から 1.0

約10年間,はてなダイアリーで英語表現の落穂拾いを行ってきました。現在はAmeba Blogに2.0を開設し,継続中です。こちらはしばらくアーカイブとして維持します。

paradigm 復習


東京工業大学特任教授の大隅良典教授が、細胞内の自食作用の研究で、ノーベル医学生理学賞を受賞しました。

Yoshinori Ohsumi Awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Yoshinori Ohsumi, a Japanese cell biologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for his discoveries on how cells recycle their content, a process known as autophagy.
Autophagy, derived from the Greek, means “self-eating.”
“This concept emerged during the 1960s, when researchers first observed that the cell could destroy its own contents by enclosing it in membranes, forming sacklike vesicles that were transported to a recycling compartment, called the lysosome, for degradation,” the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm said in announcing the prize.
Dr. Ohsumi used baker’s yeast to identify genes essential for autophagy, and he went on to examine the underlying mechanisms of the process.
“Ohsumi’s discoveries led to a new paradigm in our understanding of how the cell recycles its content,” the Nobel Assembly said. “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.”
Mutations in autophagy genes can cause disease, the assembly said, and the process is involved in several conditions including cancer and neurological disease.
Dr. Ohsumi, born in 1945 in Fukuoka, Japan, is a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/science/yoshinori-ohsumi-nobel-prize-medicine.html?emc=edit_na_20161003&nlid=61645515&ref=cta&_r=0

取り上げる単語は、"paradigm"です。

ジーニアス英和辞典』第4版(大修館)で調べてみると、「語形変化」や「理論的枠組み、方法論、対応策、パラダイム」、「模範、範例」などの意味がありました。

また、コトバンクで調べてみると、1つ目の意味として、「パラダイム、理論的枠組(ある時代、分野に特徴的な物の考え方、認識の枠組み」

さらに、語源はギリシャ語の"paradeigma"から来ており、"para-"「並んで」と"deiknymi"「示す」という意味が含まれています。

因みに形容詞は"paradigmatic"で「パラダイムの、系列的な」となります。(Akim)