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Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021

by OrangeTux on 10/4/21, 10:42 AM with 110 comments

  • by matsemann on 10/4/21, 11:15 AM

    I like how they always present the work in a readable way for laymen. Look forward to the various awards each year just because it's interesting to dive into all the different stuff. The talks are also often worth a watch.

  • by docdocgoose on 10/4/21, 11:35 AM

    I appreciate that some Nobel selections, like this one, are for core biological discoveries rather than hot topics.

    How our bodies perceive / interface with the world is fundamental to our human experience: Pain, temperature, positioning. And that these perceptions can be significantly modulated by how our bodies process them (eg pain).

    Not only is their actual body of work impressive, as it cuts across so many methodologies to get a glimpse at “how things work,” their discoveries opened up fields for others.

  • by siva7 on 10/4/21, 11:14 AM

    I would have appreciated this year's one going for mRNA vaccine research as this would have been clearly the one to meet Nobel's will.

  • by parsimony on 10/4/21, 12:51 PM

    The TRPV1 and TRPV8 receptors are fascinating. Genetic variants in these receptors explain why we experience things differently. https://www.geneticlifehacks.com/are-you-a-spicy-food-wimp/

  • by dav_Oz on 10/4/21, 1:30 PM

    Before it gets hijacked by zealots on both side in saving or depopulating the planet. It was a quite conservative pick given the complexities and interwovenness of discoveries in a given field: Citation Index and some fundamental property (TRPV --> Temperature/Heat/Pain & PIEZO--> Touch/Proprioception), it was relatively easy to pinpoint those two (no pun intended).

    The mRNA technology would not be so clear cut in terms of persons involved since it had to go through many hurdles. There are two illustrative roadmaps [1][2] (And yes, Malone et al. was a early contributor as well (1989)[3])

    [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7554980/bin/ijm... [2]https://media.springernature.com/full/springer-static/image/... [3]https://www.pnas.org/content/86/16/6077

  • by Mindwipe on 10/4/21, 12:59 PM

    Are there useful possibilities opened up by increased understanding of how the touch receptors work? I can imagine that our ability to manipulate those more effectively could have a lot of useful applications.

  • by chrisweekly on 10/4/21, 11:28 AM

    Mods: title typo "Discoveres" -> Discoverers

  • by sz4kerto on 10/4/21, 11:23 AM

    I believe Nobels for mRNA vaccines will come next year or in the year after. There's no urgency when it comes to awarding Nobel Prizes.

  • by dschiavu on 10/4/21, 11:39 PM

    I was expecting the prize to be awarded to mRNA vaccines related work.

  • by OskarS on 10/4/21, 11:12 AM

    Seems to me like maybe a more worthy recipient of this prize might be the vaccines that are currently saving hundreds of million of people from dying in the worst pandemic in a century? You know, the miracle vaccines that were developed many times faster than any other vaccine in history? The ones that (despite being perfectly safe, effective, and arguably the greatest achievement in medicine since antibiotics) are subject to an epidemic of skepticism, where a Nobel Prize could really help?