Congratulations to our Leader…
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021 was awarded jointly to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch”. Our own Michael J. Caterina, then a postdoctoral fellow in the Julius lab, conducted an unbiased functional screen based on the assumption that a single gene can confer capsaicin sensitivity in cells that are normally insensitive to capsaicin. To find this putative gene, Julius and coworkers made a cDNA library from rodent dorsal root ganglia that contain the cell bodies of the capsaicin-activated sensory neurons. Capsaicin-insensitive cells were transfected with batches of these cDNAs and eventually a single cDNA clone was isolated that could confer responsiveness to capsaicin [17] (Figure 1A).
Understanding the action of capsaicin has since provided insights into pain signaling which has remained a focus of Michael Caterina’s laboratory. For Q&A, click HERE.