David Julius


David J. Julius is an American physiologist known for his work on molecular mechanisms underlying detection of thermal stimuli and natural products. He is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and won the 2010 Shaw Prize in life science and medicine.

Education

A native of Brighton Beach, Julius earned his undergraduate degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977. He attained his doctorate from University of California, Berkeley in 1984, under joint supervision of Jeremy Thorner and Randy Schekman. In 1989, he completed his post-doctoral training with Richard Axel at Columbia University where he cloned and characterized the serotonin 1c receptor.

Research career

In 1997, the Julius lab cloned and characterized TrpV1 which is the receptor that detects capsaicin, the chemical in chili peppers that makes them "hot". Remarkably, they found that TrpV1 also detects noxious heat. TrpV1 is part of the large family of structurally related TRP cation channels. Animals that lack TrpV1 lose sensitivity to noxious heat and capsaicin.
The Julius lab has also cloned and characterized TrpM8 and TrpA1, both members of the TRP superfamily. They demonstrated that TrpM8 detects menthol and cooler temperatures and TrpA1 detects mustard oil. These observations suggested that TRP channels could detect a range of temperatures and chemicals. David Julius's lab has also made important contributions to the study of nociception by discovering toxins that modulate these channels, describing unique adaptations of the channels in diverse species and solving the cryo-EM structures of numerous channels.

Awards

In 2000, Julius was awarded the inaugural Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize for his work on cloning the capsaicin receptor. In 2010, he won the Shaw Prize for his work identifying the ion channels involved in various aspects of nociception. In 2014 he was honored by Johnson & Johnson with the Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research for discovering the molecular basis for pain and thermosensation. In 2017, he won the Gairdner Foundation International Award and the HFSP Nakasone Award. He has been awarded the 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, and the 2020 Kavli Prize in neuroscience.