0:00
/

Illustration by
Richard A. Chance
Sensing touch, the immigrant life and Ardem Patapoutian
The Nobel Prize winner talks about PIEZO 1 and 2, proprioception and the viral photo of him and his son from the 2021 Nobel Prize announcement.
By
Brady Huggett
1 November 2023 | 1 min read
Ardem Patapoutian is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and professor of neuroscience at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California. In his episode of “Synaptic,” he talks about the scary incident that prompted his emigration from Lebanon to the United States, his time at the University of California, Los Angeles, and how winning the Nobel Prize was liberating both in and outside the lab.
Read the transcript.
Recommended reading

Timothy Ryan on his pivotal switch from studying particle physics to decoding synaptic transmission
By
Brady Huggett
1 October 2024 | 70 min listen
Explore more from The Transmitter

More than two dozen papers by neural tube researcher come under scrutiny
By
Claudia López Lloreda
9 June 2025 | 6 min read

On the importance of reading (just not too much)
By
Sheena Josselyn
9 June 2025 | 8 min read

How developing neurons simplify their search for a synaptic mate
By
Calli McMurray
6 June 2025 | 6 min read
Cite this article: