The prestigious award was presented in Stockholm.
– Good morning and welcome. The Karolinska Institutet has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physiology, or Medicine as jointly, to David Julius and Erdem Patabutian, Minister Thomas Perlman said as he began his press conference in the Swedish capital.
Julius is an American physiologist and Patbutian is an Armenian-American physiologist, both of whom worked on discoveries of receptors that record temperature and touch, according to the Nobel Prize committee.
Our ability to feel warm, cool and touch is essential to survival and is the basis of our interaction with the outside world. In our daily lives we take this for granted, but how are nerve impulses triggered so that one feels these things? This question was answered by this year’s Nobel Prize winners, and it is mentioned in the jury’s reasoning.
Discoveries from this year’s Nobel Prize winners in physiology or medicine have explained how heat, cold and touch can trigger signals in our nervous system. The Nobel Committee wrote on Twitter that the ion channels identified are important for many physiological processes and disease states.
“Explorer. Unapologetic entrepreneur. Alcohol fanatic. Certified writer. Wannabe tv evangelist. Twitter fanatic. Student. Web scholar. Travel buff.”
