On Monday, the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded jointly to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.” Their work sheds light on how to reduce chronic and acute pain associated with a range of diseases, trauma and their treatments. “Our ability to sense heat, cold and touch is essential for survival and underpins our interaction with the world around us,” the Nobel committee said . “In our daily lives we take these sensations for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived?” This question, the committee said, has now been solved.

Why did they win?

The pair made breakthrough discoveries that began intense research activities that in turn led to a rapid increase in our understanding of how our nervous system senses heat, cold and mechanical stimuli. The laureates identified critical missing links in our understanding of the complex interplay between our senses and the environment. Specifically, Julius used capsaicin, a pungent compound from chili peppers that induces a burning sensation, to identify a sensor in the nerve endings of the skin that responds to heat. Patapoutian used pressure-sensitive cells to discover a novel class of sensors that respond to mechanical stimuli in the skin and internal organs.

The Nobel committee said the two scientists helped answer one of the most profound questions about the human condition: How do we sense our environment? “The mechanisms underlying our senses have triggered our curiosity for thousands of years, for example, how light is detected by the eyes, how sound waves affect our inner ears, and how different chemical compounds interact with receptors in our nose and mouth generating smell and taste,” the committee wrote.

The work by Julius and Patapoutian, for the first time, allows us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force can initiate the nerve impulses that allow us to perceive and adapt to the world around us. Their work, the committee said, has already spurred intensive research into the development of treatments for a wide range of disease conditions, including chronic pain.

Who are Julius and Patapoutian

Julius is a professor of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. In the 1990s, his research into the chemical compound capsaicin revolutionised the way scientists understand the burning sensation created by chili peppers. With a team of co-workers, he created a library containing millions of DNA fragments that are expressed in sensory neurons in response to pain, heat and touch.

Patapoutian, who was born in 1967 to Armenian parents in Lebanon and moved to Los Angeles in his youth, is a molecular biologist and neuroscientist at Scripps Research in California, which “focuses on identifying and characterising ion channels and other sensors that translate mechanical stimuli to chemical signals”. In 2020, Julius and Patapoutian got the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, which is presided over by the Norwegian government, for their groundbreaking discovery of proteins that help bodies sense pressure. NYT news service