Nobel Prize in Medicine goes to American couple David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian

He was cited for discovering receptors for temperature and touch.

The winners were announced on Monday by Thomas Perlman, the Secretary-General of the Nobel Committee.

The Nobel jury said, “The unprecedented discoveries of this year’s Nobel Prize winners have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical forces can initiate the nerve impulses that allow us to perceive and adapt to the world.” “

“In our daily lives we take these sensations lightly, but how are nerve impulses initiated to sense temperature and pressure? This question has been resolved by this year’s Nobel Prize winners.”

Professor Julius at the University of California in San Francisco and Professor Pataputian of Scripps Research in California will share a Nobel Prize check for 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million, one million euros).

The first of 2021 Nobel Prizes are announced on Monday, along with the naming of the winners, or laureates, in the fields of physiology or medicine.

A panel at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm will announce the recipient after 11:30am (0930 GMT).

Last year’s prize went to three scientists who discovered the liver-damaging hepatitis C virus, a breakthrough that led to a cure for the deadly disease and tests to stop the disease spreading through blood banks.

The Nobel Assembly is often lauded for basic science, but practical applications are also occasionally recognized. This could increase the chances of getting rewards for those involved in developing vaccines against the coronavirus.

The coveted prize comes with a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (over $1.14 million). The prize money comes from a will left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.

Other awards are for outstanding work in the fields of physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics.

Here is a list of winners of the Nobel Medicine Prize in the last 10 years:

2020: Americans Harvey Alter and Charles Rice teamed up with Britain’s Michael Houghton to discover the hepatitis C virus, leading to the development of sensitive blood tests and antiviral drugs.

2019: William Keelin and Greg Semenza of the US and Peter Ratcliffe of the UK to establish the basis for our understanding of how cells respond to and adapt to different oxygen levels.

2018: Immunologist James Ellison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan explore how to release the immune system’s brakes so that it can attack cancer cells more efficiently.

2017: American geneticists Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young for their discoveries on the internal biological clock that controls the sleep cycle of most living things.

2016: Yoshinori Ohsumi of Japan for his work on autophagy—a process by which cells “eat themselves”—which can lead to Parkinson’s and diabetes when disrupted.

2015: US citizens William Campbell born in Ireland, Japan’s Satoshi Omura and China’s Tu Yuu unlocked treatments for malaria and roundworms.

2014: American-born Briton John O’Keefe, Edward I. Moser and Norway’s May-Britt Moser explore how the brain navigates with an “inner GPS”.

2013: Thomas C. Sudhof, a US citizen born in Germany and James E. Rothman and Randy W. Scheckman of the US, asked for work on how SAIL organizes its transportation system.

2012: Shinya Yamanaka of Japan and John B. Gurden for discoveries showing how adult cells can be converted back into stem cells.

2011: Bruce Beutler of America, Jules Hoffmann, a French citizen born in Luxembourg, and Ralph Steinman of Canada for work on the body’s immune system.