Nobel Week has begun – Today, Monday, October 4, 2021, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has named the 2021 Nobel Prize Laureates in Medicine and Physiology. On Tuesday, it will become known who will receive the most honorable scientific award in physics, on Wednesday – in chemistry.
The laureates were David Julius, professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and Arden Patapoutian from Scripps Research, USA. Both are American, but one is from New York, the other is from Beirut.
Scientists have received an award “for the discovery of receptors that respond to temperature and touch” – in the laconic formulation of the Nobel Committee. That is, for having figured out the origins and mechanisms of our sensations – pleasant and not very pleasant.
In the dashing 90s of the last century, David Julius experimented with chili peppers. More precisely, with capsaicin – a substance isolated from it that makes pepper hot. And it burns like a hot iron. The effect is familiar to many – especially to those who have glued pepper plaster on themselves.
The scientist, in the end, first found that single gene that gives the ability to feel a burning sensation, and then a receptor that reacts to something hot. That is, the temperature. The receptor was named TRPV1.
Ardem Pataputyan made his “Nobel discoveries” in 2010. The scientist identified receptors on the skin – Piezo1 and Piezo2, which responded to mechanical action – specifically to pressure. That is, they were “switched on” by touch. For example, from stroking. In search of a gene that controls the process of perception, the scientist tested 72 candidates for this role until he found the right one.
As it turned out later, the discovered receptors endow a person not only with touch, but also with proprioception – the ability to sense the position of his body in space.
Already together, the current Nobel laureates experimented with “refreshing” substances – mint and menthol. And, as a result, they “groped” the TRPM8 receptors, which activated the sensation of cold.
As noted in a press release from the Nobel Committee, the laureates “identified critical missing links in understanding the complex interactions between our senses and the environment.”
BY THE WAY
From 1901 to 2020, 222 scientists received the Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine. Taking into account the current number, there are 224 of them.
It is not a sin to remind that the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov was in the top five of the laureates. He was awarded an honorary scientific award in 1904 “For his works on the physiology of digestion, which expanded and changed the understanding of the vital aspects of this issue.”
In 1908, Ilya Mechnikov received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, sharing it with the German Paul Ehrlich “For Works on Immunity.” Alas, since the time of “accursed tsarism” Russian scientists have not yet reached such heights in the field of physiology and medicine. Although from 1925 to 1930, the same Pavlov was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize for his study of conditioned reflexes. He did not receive the award, but the word combination “Pavlov's dog” went to the people, perpetuating the legendary experiments of the scientist.
