Chemical Senses Vol. 30 No. suppl 1 © Oxford University
Press 2005; all rights reserved
Human Bitter Taste Perception
German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Department of Molecular Genetics, Arthur-Scheunert-Allee 114–116, 14558 Nuthetal, Germany
Correspondence to be sent to: Wolfgang Meyerhof, e-mail: meyerhof@mail.dife.de
Key words: calcium imaging, G-protein-coupled receptor, gustation, TAS2R, tongue, T2R, TRB
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Introduction |
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Bitter taste perception is innate and induces aversive reactions. Since numerous harmful compounds, including secondary plant metabolites, synthetic chemicals, inorganic ions and rancid fats, do taste bitter, this basic taste modality may be considered as a defence mechanism against the ingestion of potential poisons. For a complete understanding of this defence mechanism it is obligatory to identify and characterize the chemical detectors of the bitter compounds, which display the remarkable ability to recognize thousands of different chemicals. Screening of the genome data bases ultimately led to the discovery of a novel gene family of
40 members in mice and 30 in
humans. Some of the genes identified by this approach are located within chromosomal loci
associated with tasting various distinct bitter compounds (Adler et al., 2000
;
Matsunami et al., 2000;
Bufe et al., 2002 |
Results and discussion |
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Acknowledgements |
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