Prof. Ardem Patapoutian, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Medicine, will give a special lecture on March 29 at 7:30 pm at the Collège de France, in partnership with the University of Paris.
The lecture, in English only, will be entitled How do you feel? The molecules that sense touch. Admission is free, subject to availability.
It's often said that seeing is believing. But touch is also belief. Our sense of touch connects us to the world, warning us of danger and suffering. But how exactly do you feel a gentle breeze or a cactus pricking your finger? How do you feel the embrace of a loved one? These senses depend on mechanotransduction, the conversion of pressure into chemical signals, which is perhaps the last sensory modality not understood at the molecular level. At this conference, Prof. Patapoutian will present the work of his laboratory, which has identified and characterized PIEZO1 and PIEZO2, pressure-activated cation channels. Genetic studies have established that PIEZO2 is the main mechanical transducer of touch, proprioception, baroreception and stretch in the bladder and lungs, and that PIEZO1 plays numerous mechanosensory roles throughout the body. Clinical studies have confirmed the importance of these channels in human physiology.
Ardem Patapoutian is a molecular biologist specializing in sensory transduction. His research has led to the identification of novel ion channels and receptors activated by temperature, mechanical force and increased cell volume. His laboratory has shown that these ion channels play a crucial role in the perception of temperature, touch, proprioception, pain and the regulation of vascular tone.
Born in Lebanon in 1967, he attended the American University of Beirut for a year before immigrating to the USA in 1986 and becoming a US citizen. He graduated from UCLA in 1990 and obtained his PhD at Caltech in the laboratory of Dr Barbara Wold in 1996. After postdoctoral work with Dr. Lou Reichardt at UCSF, he joined the faculty of Scripps Research in 2000, where he is currently Professor in the Department of Neuroscience. He also held a position at the Novartis Research Foundation Genomics Institute from 2000 to 2014.
Mr. Patapoutian received the Society for Neuroscience's Young Investigator Award in 2006 and was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in 2014. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2016), a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (2017) and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2020). He is co-recipient of Columbia's 2017 Alden Spencer Prize (with David Ginty), the 2019 Rosenstiel Prize for Outstanding Work in Basic Medical Research (with David Julius), the 2020 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience (with David Julius), the 2021 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Prize (shared with David Julius), and the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with David Julius).
