Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to an American with Armenian roots: what is his discovery

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for the study of temperature and touch receptors. with the BBC.

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The Nobel Committee in Stockholm has named the laureates in medicine or physiology. They are David Julius and Ardem Pataputyan. They discovered how temperature or touch, for example, is transformed into human sensations.

The presentation took place remotely and was broadcast on the website of the Nobel Committee.

The Nobel Prize (Swedish Nobelpriset, English Nobel Prize) is one of the most prestigious international prizes, awarded annually for outstanding scientific research, revolutionary inventions or a major contribution to culture or the development of society. Alfred Nobel was born on October 21, 1833 in Stockholm, Swedish-Norwegian Union, into a family of engineers. He was a chemist, engineer and inventor.

The discovery of Julius and Pataputian was considered a breakthrough by the Nobel jury.

“This year’s winners have allowed us to understand how temperature or mechanical force initiates neural impulses that allow us to perceive the world and adapt,” the committee said.

This technology has potential applications in a variety of fields, from medicine to virtual reality and robotics. This will make it possible to treat many neurodiseases, including severe neurodegenerative diseases. That is, to create fundamentally new methods of therapy.

The Prize in Medicine is awarded, according to Nobel Assembly member Professor Juleen Zierat, “according to very narrow criteria.”

“The discovery rate should be very high. It cannot be an invention or improvement of something existing. There must be a discovery,” she added in an interview before the award ceremony.

Born in 1955, Julius works at the University of California, San Francisco, and in recent decades has studied the molecular mechanisms that help people feel touch and pain. A group of scientists under his leadership has identified a whole family of temperature-sensitive receptors that allow nerve fibers to detect high and low temperatures, using the properties of natural products, in particular, hot peppers.

Ardem Pataputyan is a scientist of Armenian origin. The neuroscientist was born in Beirut, and later emigrated to the United States, where he began to seriously engage in scientific activities. It was he who used pressure-sensitive cells to discover a new class of sensors that respond to mechanical stimuli in the skin and internal organs. And his colleague, David Julius, used a hot chili compound that causes a burning sensation to identify a sensor in the nerve endings of the skin that reacts to heat.

In the laboratory, Pataputyan was able to identify and describe ion channels that are activated by changes in thermal energy and thus function as molecular thermometers of the human body.

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It remained unclear how our temperature and mechanical stimuli are converted into electrical impulses in the nervous system, allowing us to feel the world around us and ourselves. Imagine that you decide to walk barefoot in the morning field and walk on the cool, swollen grass with dew ...

Stop! How do you know the grass is cool? That it is covered with dew?

We are so accustomed to trusting our senses that we rarely think about how exactly they work. By touch, distinguishing a cold object from a hot one, or a hard object from a soft one (scientists call this ability somatosensory) is not difficult even with your eyes closed. But how we do this—what mechanism underlies these sensations—science has not been able to explain for millennia. Back in the 17th century, the French philosopher Rene Descartes suggested that since when fire comes into contact with the skin we feel a burn and pain, it must be somehow connected to the brain in order to transmit the appropriate signal there.

At the end of the 19th century, sensitive points were discovered on the skin that reacted to a particular stimulus, but - again - how and why this happened remained a mystery.

In 1906, Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramon y Cajal received the Nobel Prize for their description of the structure of the nervous system. In 1932, the award was shared by Charles Sherrington and Edgar Adrian for “discoveries concerning the functions of neurons,” including somatosensory ones. Another 12 years later, in 1944, the prize was awarded to Joseph Erlanger and Herbert Spencer Gasser for describing the various functions that single nerve fibers can perform.

David Julius noticed that spicy food causes exactly the same reaction in the body as hot food - and suggested that the alkaloid capsaicin (which provides the hot taste to different types of peppers) activates a specific fragment of DNA - the same as high temperature. After searching through thousands of possibilities, he finally discovered the protein responsible for this reaction, called TRPV1. And then the second - TRPV2, which reacts to even higher temperatures.

The protein responsible for the sensation of cold was discovered by both laureates almost simultaneously, in 2002. But Ardem Pataputyan was unlucky with the protein that provides the sensation of physical touch. The professor compiled a list of 72 genes - potential candidates for the role of the tactile receptor - and began to turn them off one by one, checking to see if the sense of touch was lost. The required gene was the last, 72nd.

Thus, scientists have figured out exactly how the somatosensory system allows us to feel not only temperature and touch, but also pain, and even the movement of our own body. It is not surprising that the decision of the Nobel Committee said that the scientific work of the newly minted laureates “revealed one of the mysteries of nature, explaining at the molecular level […] our ability to perceive and interpret both the world around us and our own internal sensations.”

This week, the Nobel committee will announce winners in four more areas.

The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate will be announced in the Norwegian capital on Friday. 329 candidates apply for it.

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The award ceremony will take place on the day of Alfred Nobel's death, December 10, in the capitals of Sweden and Norway. As in 2020, due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, traditional banquets were abandoned, the ceremonies will be held online. The laureates will receive diplomas and medals at the Swedish embassies in their own countries or at universities. The prize fund for each nomination will be approximately $ 1,53 million.

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