David Julius of UC San Francisco and Ardem Patapoutian of Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla are honored for their discovery of receptors for temperature and touch.
Two California scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for their discoveries of how the human body perceives temperature and touch, revelations that could lead to new ways of treating pain or even heart disease.
The committee said Julius, who was born in New York and now works at the UC San Francisco, used capsaicin, the active component in chili peppers, to identify the nerve sensors that allow the skin to respond to heat.Patapoutian, who was born in Lebanon and now works at Scripps Research Institute at La Jolla, found separate pressure-sensitive sensors in cells that respond to mechanical stimulation, the committee said.
The choice of Julius, 65, and Patapoutian underscored how little scientists knew, before the pair’s discoveries, about how our bodies perceive the external world — and how much there still is to learn, said Oscar Marin, director of the MRC Center for Neurodevelopmental Disorders at King’s College London.
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