Chemical Senses Vol. 30 No. suppl 1 © Oxford University
Press 2005; all rights reserved
Introductory Remarks on Umami Research: Candidate Receptors and Signal Transduction Mechanisms on Umami
1 Section of Fundamental Oral Health Care Science, Faculty of Dentistry, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, 1-5-45 Yushima, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8549, Japan and 2 Section of Oral Neuroscience, Graduate School of Dental Science, Kyushu University, Fukuoka 812-8582, Japan
Correspondence to be sent to: Yuzo Ninomiya, e-mail: nino@dent.kyushu-u.ac.jp
Key words: mammal, MSG, receptor, research history, transduction, umami
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Umami as a unique taste |
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Nearly a century ago, Ikeda insisted that there existed one other taste which is distinct from the four basic tastes of sweet, sour, salty and bitter, and tried to isolate a unique taste substance from a major ingredient of Japanese broth, seaweed Laminaria japonica. He identified glutamic acid as the taste substance and named the taste of glutamate umami. His paper in old-style Japanese was recently translated into English and published in this journal (Ikeda, 2002
). His discovery and assertion, however, had remained unnoticed for
decades because the taste of glutamate is subtle and perceived more clearly at moderate
concentrations than at high concentrations.
Since about 1980, research on umami taste has proceeded on a larger scale. In 1985,
the first international symposium on umami was held in
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Tongue regional differences in umami sensitivity |
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Recent investigations of candidate umami receptors |
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Possible transduction mechanisms for umami taste |
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