Ardem Patapoutian | |
---|---|
Born | 1967 (age 56–57) Beirut, Lebanon |
Citizenship |
|
Education | American University of Beirut University of California, Los Angeles (BS) California Institute of Technology (MS, PhD) |
Known for | research of PIEZO1, PIEZO2, TRPM8 receptors |
Awards | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2021) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Molecular biology, neuroscience |
Institutions | Scripps Research |
Thesis | The role of the MyoD family genes during mouse development (1996) |
Doctoral advisor | Barbara Wold |
Ardem Patapoutian (born 1967) [1] is a Lebanese-American molecular biologist, neuroscientist, and Nobel Prize laureate of Armenian descent. [2] He is known for his work in characterizing the PIEZO1, PIEZO2, and TRPM8 receptors that detect pressure, menthol, and temperature. Patapoutian is a neuroscience professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. In 2021, he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with David Julius. [3]
Ardem Patapoutian (Armenian : Արտեմ Փաթափութեան) was born to a Lebanese Armenian family in Beirut, Lebanon. [2] [4] [5] His father, Sarkis Patapoutian (better known by the pen name Sarkis Vahakn ), is a poet and an accountant, [6] while his mother, Haiguhi Adjemian, was the principal of an Armenian school in Beirut. He has a brother, Ara, and a sister, Houry. [7] His grandparents settled in Lebanon from Hadjin after surviving the Armenian Genocide. [8] [9] [10]
He is childhood friends with journalist and author Vicken Cheterian. [11] He attended the Demirdjian and Hovagimian Armenian schools in Beirut. [11] He enrolled at the American University of Beirut for a year before emigrating to the United States in 1986. [5] [12] He received a B.S. degree in cell and developmental biology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1990 and a Ph.D. degree in biology from the California Institute of Technology in 1996 under direction of Barbara Wold. [13] [5] [14]
As a postdoctoral fellow, Patapoutian worked with Louis F. Reichardt at the University of California, San Francisco. [15] In 2000, he became an assistant professor at the Scripps Research Institute. [16] Between 2000 and 2014, he had an additional research position for the Novartis Research Foundation. [17] Since 2014, Patapoutian has been an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). [14]
Patapoutian, a naturalized US citizen, [5] lives in Del Mar, California with his wife Nancy Hong, a venture capitalist, and son, Luca. [18] [19] [20] [21]
Patapoutian's research is into the biological receptors for temperature and touch (nociception). [3] The knowledge is used to develop treatments for a range of diseases, including chronic pain. [22] The discoveries made it possible to understand how heat, cold and mechanical forces trigger nerve impulses. [22]
Patapoutian researches the signal transduction of sensors. Patapoutian and co-workers inactivated genes. [23] In this way, they identified the gene, that made the cells insensitive for touch. [23] The channel for the sense of touch was called PIEZO1 (transl. pressure). [23] Through its similarity to PIEZO1, a second gene was discovered and named PIEZO2. [24] This ion channel, the more important of the two mechanoreceptors, is essential for the sense of touch. [24] [25] PIEZO1 and PIEZO2 channels have been shown to regulate additional important physiological processes including blood pressure, respiration and urinary bladder control. [24]
Patapoutian also made significant contributions to the identification of novel ion channels and receptors that are activated by temperature, mechanical forces or increased cell volume. [26] [27] Patapoutian and his collaborators were able to show that these ion channels play an outstanding role in the sensation of temperature, in the sensation of touch, in proprioception, [28] in the sensation of pain and in the regulation of vascular tone. More recent work uses functional genomics techniques to identify and characterize mechanosensitive ion channels (mechanotransduction). [16] [29] [30] [31]
Patapoutian has an h-index of 68 according to Google Scholar, [32] and of 63 according to Scopus [33] (As of May 2020 [update] ). He has been a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 2016, a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2017 [34] and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2020. [35]
In 2017, Patapoutian received the W. Alden Spencer Award, [36] in 2019 the Rosenstiel Award, [37] in 2020 the Kavli Prize for Neuroscience, [38] and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology / Biomedicine. [39]
In 2021, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with David Julius for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch. [3] [40] [41]
In October 2021 President of Lebanon Michel Aoun awarded Patapoutian the Lebanese Order of Merit. [42]
In December 2021, Patapoutian received the American Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award presented by Awards Council member Frances Arnold. [43]
In 2022, Patapoutian was named by Carnegie Corporation of New York as an honoree of the Great Immigrants Award. [44]
Patapoutian, the first Armenian Nobel laureate, received a hero's welcome when he visited Armenia in June 2022. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan awarded him the Order of St. Mesrop Mashtots, [45] while the Armenian National Academy of Sciences elected him an honorary member, [46] and the Yerevan State Medical University awarded him an honorary doctorate. [47] Patapoutian gifted a replica of his Nobel medal to the History Museum of Armenia. [48] [49] HayPost issued a stamp dedicated to him. [50]
In physiology, thermoception or thermoreception is the sensation and perception of temperature, or more accurately, temperature differences inferred from heat flux. It deals with a series of events and processes required for an organism to receive a temperature stimulus, convert it to a molecular signal, and recognize and characterize the signal in order to trigger an appropriate defense response.
Sydney Brenner was a South African biologist. In 2002, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and Sir John E. Sulston. Brenner made significant contributions to work on the genetic code, and other areas of molecular biology while working in the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. He established the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism for the investigation of developmental biology, and founded the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, California, United States.
The year 1967 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Scripps Research is a nonprofit American medical research facility that focuses on research and education in the biomedical sciences. Headquartered in San Diego, California, the institute has over 170 laboratories employing 2,100 scientists, technicians, graduate students, and administrative and other staff.
Aaron Ciechanover is an Israeli biologist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for characterizing the method that cells use to degrade and recycle proteins using ubiquitin.
Peter Agre is an American physician, Nobel Laureate, and molecular biologist, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute. In 2003, Agre and Roderick MacKinnon shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes." Agre was recognized for his discovery of aquaporin water channels. Aquaporins are water-channel proteins that move water molecules through the cell membrane. In 2009, Agre was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and became active in science diplomacy.
Peter Charles Doherty is an Australian immunologist and Nobel laureate. He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1995, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Rolf M. Zinkernagel in 1996 and was named Australian of the Year in 1997. In the Australia Day Honours of 1997, he was named a Companion of the Order of Australia for his work with Zinkernagel. He is also a National Trust Australian Living Treasure. In 2009 as part of the Q150 celebrations, Doherty's immune system research was announced as one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland for its role as an iconic "innovation and invention".
Merkel nerve endings are mechanoreceptors, a type of sensory receptor, that are found in the basal epidermis and hair follicles. They are nerve endings and provide information on mechanical pressure, position, and deep static touch features, such as shapes and edges.
Carolyn Ruth Bertozzi is an American chemist and Nobel laureate, known for her wide-ranging work spanning both chemistry and biology. She coined the term "bioorthogonal chemistry" for chemical reactions compatible with living systems. Her recent efforts include synthesis of chemical tools to study cell surface sugars called glycans and how they affect diseases such as cancer, inflammation, and viral infections like COVID-19. At Stanford University, she holds the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professorship in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Bertozzi is also an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and is the former director of the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience research center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Shinya Yamanaka is a Japanese stem cell researcher and a Nobel Prize laureate. He is a professor and the director emeritus of Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, Kyoto University; as a senior investigator at the UCSF-affiliated Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, California; and as a professor of anatomy at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Yamanaka is also a past president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR).
Mechanosensitive channels (MSCs), mechanosensitive ion channels or stretch-gated ion channels are membrane proteins capable of responding to mechanical stress over a wide dynamic range of external mechanical stimuli. They are present in the membranes of organisms from the three domains of life: bacteria, archaea, and eukarya. They are the sensors for a number of systems including the senses of touch, hearing and balance, as well as participating in cardiovascular regulation and osmotic homeostasis (e.g. thirst). The channels vary in selectivity for the permeating ions from nonselective between anions and cations in bacteria, to cation selective allowing passage Ca2+, K+ and Na+ in eukaryotes, and highly selective K+ channels in bacteria and eukaryotes.
David Jay Julius is an American physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate known for his work on molecular mechanisms of pain sensation and heat, including the characterization of the TRPV1 and TRPM8 receptors that detect capsaicin, menthol, and temperature. He is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
James Patrick Allison is an American immunologist and Nobel laureate who holds the position of professor and chair of immunology and executive director of immunotherapy platform at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Allison is Regental Professor and Founding-Director of James P. Allison Institute at the MD Anderson Cancer Center.
The Order of St. Mesrop Mashtots is awarded for significant achievements in economic development of Armenia, natural and social sciences, inventions, culture, education, healthcare, and public service, as well as for activities promoting scientific, technological, economic and cultural cooperation with foreign countries. The law on the St. Mesrop Mashtots Order has been in effect since July 26, 1993. It is named after Mesrop Mashtots.
PIEZO1 is a mechanosensitive ion channel protein that in humans is encoded by the gene PIEZO1. PIEZO1 and its close homolog PIEZO2 were cloned in 2010, using an siRNA-based screen for mechanosensitive ion channels.
Piezo-type mechanosensitive ion channel component 2 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the PIEZO2 gene. It has a homotrimeric structure, with three blades curving into a nano-dome, with a diameter of 28 nanometers.
Yoda1 is a chemical compound which is the first agonist developed for the mechanosensitive ion channel PIEZO1. This protein is involved in regulation of blood pressure and red blood cell volume, and Yoda1 is used in scientific research in these areas.
Arun Kumar Shukla is an Indian structural biologist and the Joy-Gill Chair professor at the department of biological sciences and bioengineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Known for his studies on G protein-coupled receptor, Shukla is a Wellcome Trust-DBT Intermediate Fellow and a recipient of the SwarnaJayanti Fellowship of the Department of Science and Technology. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences, in 2017/18. He received the 2021 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in Biological Science. He was awarded the Infosys Prize 2023 in Life Sciences his outstanding contributions to the biology of G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs).
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was jointly awarded to the American physiologist David Julius and Armenian-American neuroscientist Ardem Patapoutian "for the discovery of receptors for temperature and touch." During the award ceremony on December 10, 2021, Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet member Patrik Ernfors expressed:
"The 2021 Nobel Prize laureates have explained fundamental mechanisms underpinning how we sense the world within and around us. Our temperature and touch sensors are used all the time in every day of our lives. They continuously keep us updated about our environment, and without them even the simplest of our daily tasks would be impossible to perform."
...Patapoutian and his wife, venture capitalist Nancy Hong...