Capsaicin was, for me, one of those wake-up calls you regularly receive as a practising chemist. As an undergraduate student I remember seeing the structure of this compound (see illustration ...

Binshtok et al. theorized that it could be possible to exploit the transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 (TRPV1) channel, which is sensitive to noxious heat and capsaicin, to selectively ...

But there's no real heat in a pepper. So, what's going on? It's all about a chemical compound in peppers called capsaicin. Capsaicin binds to pain receptors on our nerves called TRPV1. Normally ...