NOBEL PRIZE FOR PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE 2021

Disclaimer: Copyright infringement not intended.

Context

American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian have won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.

Experiment

Julius has been studying the different compounds in chili peppers and spider venom to understand how our bodies sense heat and chemical irritants.
Decoding the neuroscience of pain can help develop new targets for pain therapy.
Patapoutian helped discover a novel class of sensors in our skin and internal organs that respond to cold and other mechanical stimuli.

Findings

They detailed how capsaicin, or the chemical compound in chilli peppers, causes the burning sensation.
They created a library of DNA fragments to understand the corresponding genes and finally discovered a new capsaicin receptor and named it TRPV1.
This discovery paved the way for the identification of many other temperature-sensing receptors.
They identified another new receptor called TRPM8, a receptor that is activated by cold.
They explained that this new receptor is specifically expressed in a subset of pain-and-temperature-sensing neurons.
They further studied if these receptors can be activated by mechanical stimuli.
They poked cells with a micropipette and identified a cell line that produced an electric signal in response.
They identified a single gene, which when silenced made the cells insensitive to the poking.
They named this new mechanosensitive ion channel Piezo1.

Significance

This knowledge [of the TRPV1, TRPM8 and Piezo channels] is being used to develop treatments for a wide range of disease conditions, including chronic pain.