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Pradeep Kumar

05/10/21 11:00 AM IST

The Nobel Prize in Medicine 2021

In news

American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Medicine for discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch which the award-giving body said could pave the way for new pain-killers.

Details
  • Their findings “have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force can initiate the nerve impulses that allow us to perceive and adapt to the world around us.
  • This knowledge is being used to develop treatments for a wide range of disease conditions, including chronic pain.
  • The breakthrough discoveries, achieved independently of one another, had launched intense research activities that had led to “a rapid increase in our understanding of how our nervous system senses heat, cold and mechanical stimuli.
Questions that can be answered with this discovery
  • One of the great mysteries facing humanity is the question of how we sense our environment.
  • The mechanisms underlying our senses have triggered our curiosity for thousands of years, for example, how light is detected by the eyes, how sound waves affect our inner ears, and how different chemical compounds interact with receptors in our nose and mouth generating smell and taste.
  • We also have other ways to perceive the world around us like walking barefooted on hot sunny day we can feel the warmth through our legs.
Source: The Hindu

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