Two Americans win Medicine Nobel for work on heat and touch

FILE PHOTO: U.S. biochemist David Julius (L) receives the 2010 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research from Spain's Crown Prince Felipe during a ceremony at Campoamor theatre in Oviedo, northern Spain, October 22, 2010. REUTERS/Felix Ordonez

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday for the discovery of receptors in the skin that sense temperature and touch and could pave the way for new pain-killers.

Their work, carried out independently, has helped show how humans convert the physical impact from heat or touch into nerve impulses that allow us to "perceive and adapt to the world around us," the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute said.