David Julius (UCSF): How peppers & peppermint identified sensory receptors for temperature and pain

www.ibiology.o...
How do we perceive our surroundings, the things we smell, hear or even feel? Dr. David Julius explains how his lab used natural products, such as capsaicin from chili peppers and menthol from peppermint, to identify sensory receptors that detect both temperature and pain.
Speaker Biography:
Dr. David Julius is a Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. His laboratory was the first to identify the sensory receptors involved in detecting both temperature and the natural heating and cooling agents found in foods such as chili peppers and mint. Julius was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2004 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005. He was awarded the Shaw Prize in 2010.