APS Congratulates 2021 Nobel Laureates Julius and Patapoutian

Rockville, Md. (October 4, 2021)—The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to David Julius, PhD, and Ardem Patapoutian, PhD, for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch. The American Physiological Society (APS) congratulates the winners for their discoveries and contributions that improve understanding of reducing chronic and acute pain stemming from disease and trauma.

Julius, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, used capsaicin, a potent compound in chili peppers, to identify a sensor in the skin’s nerve endings that responds to heat. Patapoutian, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, identified a cell line in the skin and internal organs that produces electric signals in response to mechanical stimuli.

“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 wrote in a press release.

“Despite the critical importance of these senses for our daily life, the underlying mechanisms remained largely unknown. Recent advances in cryo-electron microscopy, genetics and molecular biology have led to the identification of several critical ion channel families responsible for sensing these stimuli. In their work, Julius and Patapoutian have overcome the challenge of discovering the ion channels that are primarily responsible for these underlying sensations,” said Jan-Marino Ramirez, PhD, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neurophysiology (JNP).

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