Hi, it's Flor Lixman, and you're listening to Science Friday.

On today's show, a really special conversation with Nobel laureate, Ardem Pate Pateuputian,

about sense of touch and a sense of belonging in science.

For me, a scientist was this, you know, I didn't immediately identify with it because of my

background, not thinking about it. So in public, even when I was an assistant professor, I would say

things like, I'm a researcher. I wouldn't say I'm a scientist. I want you to focus on your hands.

What are your fingertips feeling right now?

Maybe it's the cool screen of your phone or the tug of your dog's leash.

But how do physical forces like pressure temperature, get turned into a sensation?

A sensation we know and love. The sense of touch.

A few decades ago, Dr. Ardem Padapudian set out to investigate that fundamental question,

the biology of our sense of touch, which was a complete mystery at the time.

Through a long process of gene elimination, he identified a new class of sensors in the cell membrane that turned pressure

into an electrical signal. He changed the game in the field of sensation and perception, and in

2021, he shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. So today we are sitting down with Ardeme,

a neuroscientist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, to hear about how he thinks about

science, what fires him up, and what keeps him going. Arden, welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you so much. Glad to be here. So you made this huge breakthrough, and I think it's tempting for outsiders, anyway, to see it as destiny.

Like, oh, you must have been born to be a scientist, or you always knew that this would be your path.

Is that your story?

That's no, almost the opposite of it.

It's just nothing close to it actually. I was actually thinking of writing an autobiography and I was talking to different people I could work with. And I quit the idea because of that reason. They kept trying to pinpoint this moment in my childhood where this was actually destined to be true.

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