Ken Matanachai '22
We’ve all had that feeling of fear or anxiety when we experience something painful, such as getting injected by a needle or breaking a bone, but how do we feel anything in the first place? Why do some people have different reactions than others? Nobel Prize winners David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian have ventured to find the answer to these questions... researched and come one step closer to the truth behind them, which could possibly enhance future drug development.
Julius and Patapoutian sought to understand how the human nervous system could detect temperature and mechanical stimuli through electrical impulses. They studied red hot chili peppers and determined that they were composed of a chemical called capsaicin, which causes the burning sensation of the spice. Stimulating the sensation that capsaicin creates, Julius was able to “identify a sensor in the nerve endings of the skin that responds to heat.” These studies later steered his finding of TRPV1, which detects heat and pain and is essential to the nervous system, heart, and skeletal muscles. Meanwhile, Patapoutian and his team used "pressure-sensitive cells to discover a novel class of sensors that respond to mechanical stimuli in the skin and internal organs”. In the experiment, they swapped 72 separate genes in a cell and poked it to observe how the genes reacted. They observed that one type of gene was responsible for pain, while another type of gene named Piezo, which activates when cell membranes receive pressure. TRP and Piezo channels guide physiological functions associated with “mechanical stimuli” or physical contact. The discovery of TRP and Piezo genes has helped to explain many aspects of human physiology, including core body temperature, inflammatory pain, protective reflexes, respiration, blood pressure, and urination, which, in turn, can be used to progress certain treatments for many diseases.
This research is reflected in everyday life. For example, eating spicy food. We all know that consuming milk or ice cream are great remedies to relieve spice, but why? Molecules of casein found in dairy products repel the capsaicin in spicy food, preventing the capsaicin from coming into contact with the mouth’s pain receptors and therefore, alleviating spice On the other hand, while water may seem like a go-to choice to relieve spice, it actually does not help much at all. As capsaicin is an oil, water isn’t able to create a ‘repel’ and washes all the food chunks down instead.
References
https://www.dw.com/en/david-julius-and-ardem-patapoutian-win-2021-nobel-prize-in-medicine/a-59350653