Lebanese – American molecular biologist Ardem Patapoutian and American physiologist David Julius were on Monday jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology for their work on identifying receptors that allow the body’s cells to sense temperature and touch.

Patapoutian was born in the year 1967 in Beirut, the capital city
of Lebanon.  The molecular biologist has a specialization in
sensory transduction.

He started his university education at the American University of Beirut but he did not stay there for long. After a year he immigrated to the United States of America in 1986.  

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Patapoutian graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA) in 1990 and completed his Ph.D from the prestigious California Institute
of Technology in Pasadena. During this time, he worked in the lab of Dr Barbara
Wold (1996).

Patapoutian then worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. Louis
Reichardt at the University of California, San Francisco.

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He became a part of faculty at The Scripps Research Institute in
2000 where he worked as a professor in the department of Neuroscience. A fellow
of the American Assiciation for the Avancement of Science and a member of the
National Academy of Sciences held a position at the Genomics Institute of The Novartis Research Foundation
(2000-2014).

Patapoutian has been a recipient of
several awards throughout his career. His trophy cabinet includes the Young
Investigator Award from the Society for Neuroscience in 2006 and most recently
the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (2021).

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The award given by the Royal
Swedish Army of Sciences is worth 1.5 million US Dollars.

He was the joint winner of the
Nobel Prize alongside David Julius. They won the prize for their discoveries of
receptors for smell and touch.

Patapoutian made use of pressure-sensitive
cells for discovering a novel class of sensors which respond to mechanical
stimuli in the skin and internal organs, as per ANI.

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The breakthroughs have enabled
scientist to take up intense research activities which would lead to a far
better understanding of how the nervous system senses heat, cold and mechanical
stimuli. The ion channels identified by the Nobel winners are of great importance
for many physiological processes and disease conditions.