Nobel prize in medicine won by US scientists who unlocked the secrets of our sense of touch

Thomas Perlmann, the Secretary of the Nobel Committee, announcing the winners during a press conference at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

(Image credit: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images)

The 2021 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to two U.S. scientists who discovered the microscopic secrets behind the human sense of touch.

David Julius, of the University of California San Francisco, received half of the prize for using "capsaicin, a pungent compound from chili peppers that induces a burning sensation, to identify a sensor in the nerve endings of the skin that responds to heat," while Ardem Patapoutian, of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, received the other half for using "pressure-sensitive cells to discover a novel class of sensors that respond to mechanical stimuli in the skin and internal organs," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Monday (Oct. 4).

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Beginning in the 1990s, the scientists pieced together the molecular pathways that translate heat and pressure detected on the skin into nerve impulses perceived by the brain. Julius and his colleagues started the work by creating a library of millions of DNA segments containing genes found in sensory nerve cells. By adding the genes one by one to cells that did not normally react to capsaicin, they eventually found that a single gene was responsible for the burning sensation associated with capsaicin. The gene they had discovered gave cells the ability to build a protein called TRPV1, which was activated at temperatures hot enough to be considered painful.

Building on this work, Patapoutian and his colleagues created a library of 72 genes that they suspected encoded blueprints to make receptors for mechanical pressure. By painstakingly deactivating these genes one by one in cells, they discovered that one of the genes produced a protein that spurred cells to produce a tiny electrical signal each time they were prodded. The receptor they had discovered was not only vital for sensing mechanical force, but was also used in various ways to maintain blood vessels, alongside having a proposed role in adjusting the body’s blood pressure.

"While we understood the physiology of the senses, what we didn't understand was how we sensed differences in temperature or pressure," Oscar Marin, director of the MRC Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders at King’s College London told The Associated Press. "Knowing how our body senses these changes is fundamental because once we know those molecules, they can be targeted. It's like finding a lock and now we know the precise keys that will be necessary to unlock it."

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Ben Turner is a U.K. based writer and editor at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.