The names of the Nobel Prize laureates in physiology or medicine have become known. Representatives of the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute named the names of David Julius and Ardem Patapoutyan during an online broadcast.
Scientists are recognized for the “discovery of temperature and touch receptors.”
University of California (San Francisco) professor David Julius studied how the compound capsaicin, which is part of red peppers, causes a burning sensation.
Together with his colleagues, he studied genes in sensory neurons and isolated one single gene.
It was he who forced cell cultures to react to the burning compound.
Ardem Pataputyan, a professor at the Scripps Institute, and his colleagues identified a gene that, when turned off, caused cells to stop responding to touch.
The unknown channel was named Piezo1, and soon a similar one, Piezo2, was opened.
We further found out that it controls a person’s sense of “one’s own position in space,” and both channels take part in the regulation of blood pressure, breathing and the process of urination.
Last year’s winners of the Physiology or Medicine Prize were Harvey Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles Rice for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus.
