David Julius, Ardem Patapoutian win 2021 Nobel Prize in 'physiology or medicine'

Illustration of David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian (Image: Twitter/@NobelPrize)

Researchers David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian have been jointly awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in 'physiology or medicine' category, the Nobel Assembly announced on October 4.

The honour was bestowed upon them "for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch," it said.

"Our ability to sense heat, cold and touch is essential for survival and underpins our interaction with the world around us. 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 has been solved by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates," the Nobel Assembly said in a press release.

Julius, one of the co-winners, utilised 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, the assembly said.

Patapoutian used pressure-sensitive cells to discover a novel class of sensors that respond to mechanical stimuli in the skin and internal organs, it added.

"These breakthrough discoveries launched intense research activities leading 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," the assembly said.

Notably, Julius is affiliated to the University of California, San Francisco, United States. He was born in New York in 1955.

Patapoutian is affiliated with Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Scripps Research, La Jolla, CA, USA. He was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1967.

Julius and Patapoutian's work is considered to be path-breaking as prior to their discoveries, "our understanding of how the nervous system senses and interprets our environment still contained a fundamental unsolved question: how are temperature and mechanical stimuli converted into electrical impulses in the nervous system?" the assembly noted.