Warmth, cold, touch – how our body perceives such stimuli has long been unclear. Two US researchers have now received the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their discoveries on the biological basis.
Stockholm – Two US researchers will receive this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their fundamental research into temperature and touch perception.
David Julius and the Lebanon-born researcher Ardem Patapoutian identified critical gaps in the understanding of the complex interplay between our senses and the environment, the Karolinska Institute announced on Monday in Stockholm. The knowledge is used to develop new treatments for chronic pain and numerous other diseases.
The calls from Sweden reached the two scientists in the USA at night. The Nobel Committee said it was difficult to come into contact with the two laureates. When he did reach them by phone, they were surprised and very, very happy, said the secretary of the Nobel Assembly of Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute, Thomas Perlmann.
The committee later posted a photo of Ardem Patapoutian on Twitter. Then the newly crowned laureate looks at the official announcement with a beaming smile and sitting in bed with his son. Julius was also informed early on by the Karolinska Institute, as his wife Holly Ingraham wrote on Twitter. To do this, she put a picture of him – apparently still in his dressing gown – looking at an electronic device.
Before the researchers’ discoveries, it was unclear how temperature and mechanical stimuli are converted into electrical impulses by the nervous system, writes the Nobel Committee in support of the award. Born in New York in 1955, David Julius began working with capsaicin, the fiery ingredient in chilli pods, at the University of California in San Francisco in the late 1990s. At this point it was already known that capsaicin activated pain-sensing nerves – but how exactly was unclear. Julius identified a gene responsible for this, later called TRPV1. “His discovery started a huge wave in pain reliever research that is still going on,” said Gary Lewin, working group leader at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Berlin.
Patapoutian primarily dealt with the question of how pressure and touch are perceived by the body. Born in Beirut in 1967, the scientist came to the United States as a teenager and received his doctorate from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Since 2000 he has been with Scripps Research, a leading biomedical research institution in La Jolla, California. Patapoutian had identified a gene that mediates the response to pressure. It was named Piezo1, after the Greek word for pressure.
“In science it is often the case that the things that we take for granted are of great interest,” said Patapoutian in an interview with the Nobel Committee. “For us in exploring touch and pain, it was like the big elephant in the room.”
“Ardem Patapoutian is a very determined, charismatic person, but he was also extremely lucky to discover the Piezo1 ion channel,” said Lewin, who also worked on the topic. The discoveries of the two scientists led to numerous advances in this area of research. The discovered receptors not only play a role in the perception of external stimuli such as temperature or touch, but also in the regulation of important internal body functions, such as blood pressure, breathing and control of the urinary bladder.
Julius and Patapoutian share the Nobel Prize, which this year is endowed with ten million Swedish kronor (around 980,000 euros) and is probably the most prestigious science prize in the world. However, the two have already received numerous awards – not until 2020, for example, the highly regarded Kavli Prize for Neuroscience.
Since 1901, more than 220 people have received the Nobel Prize for Medicine, including only 12 women. The first went to the German bacteriologist Emil Adolf von Behring for the discovery of a therapy against diphtheria. In 1995, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard was the first and so far only German woman to receive this award.
The Nobel Prize series began with the Medicine Prize. The winners of the physics and chemistry prizes will be named on Tuesday and Wednesday. The announcements for the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Nobel Peace Prize will follow on Thursday and Friday. The series ends on the following Monday, October 11th, with the so-called Nobel Prize for Economics donated by the Swedish Reichsbank.
The ceremonial awarding of all awards traditionally takes place on December 10th, the anniversary of the death of the prize donor Alfred Nobel. dpa
