Coding of sweet, bitter, and umami tastes: different receptor cells sharing similar signaling pathways.

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Cell. 2003 Feb 7;112(3):293-301

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Coding of sweet, bitter, and umami tastes: different receptor cells sharing similar signaling pathways. Zuker Lab

Zhang Y, Hoon MA, Chandrashekar J, Mueller KL, Cook B, Wu D, Zuker CS, Ryba NJ

Note: Research in this publication was not performed at Janelia.

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Abstract

Mammals can taste a wide repertoire of chemosensory stimuli. Two unrelated families of receptors (T1Rs and T2Rs) mediate responses to sweet, amino acids, and bitter compounds. Here, we demonstrate that knockouts of TRPM5, a taste TRP ion channel, or PLCbeta2, a phospholipase C selectively expressed in taste tissue, abolish sweet, amino acid, and bitter taste reception, but do not impact sour or salty tastes. Therefore, despite relying on different receptors, sweet, amino acid, and bitter transduction converge on common signaling molecules. Using PLCbeta2 taste-blind animals, we then examined a fundamental question in taste perception: how taste modalities are encoded at the cellular level. Mice engineered to rescue PLCbeta2 function exclusively in bitter-receptor expressing cells respond normally to bitter tastants but do not taste sweet or amino acid stimuli. Thus, bitter is encoded independently of sweet and amino acids, and taste receptor cells are not broadly tuned across these modalities.

PMID: 12581520 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

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Coding of sweet, bitter, and umami tastes: different receptor cells sharing similar signaling pathways.

Note: Research in this publication was not performed at Janelia.

Abstract

PMID: 12581520 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Janelia Authors