Chemical Senses Advance Access originally published online on August 3, 2005
Chemical Senses 2005 30(7):547-557; doi:10.1093/chemse/bji048
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Building a Tree of Knowledge: Analysis of Bitter Molecules
Unilever Food and Health Research Institute, Olivier van Noortlaan 120, 3133 AT Vlaardingen, The Netherlands
Correspondence to be sent to: S. Rodgers, Unilever Food and Health Research Institute, Olivier van Noortlaan 120, 3133 AT Vlaardingen, The Netherlands. e-mail: sarah.rodgers{at}unilever.com
A phylogenetic-like tree of structural fragments has been constructed to extract useful insights from a structural database of bitter molecules. The tree of structural fragments summarizes the substructural groups present in the molecules from the bitter database. These structural fragments are compared with a large number of random molecules to highlight substructures specific to bitter molecules. This organization of the structures enabled the detection of structureactivity relationships for the bitter molecules through the construction of R-tables. Key structural groups, able to distinguish between bitter and random molecules, were identified through an analysis of the tree. This information can be used to further understand which structural components are involved in producing a bitter taste.
Key words: bitter, molecular similarity, phylogenetic-like tree, R-tables, structureactivity relationships, taste