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Chemical Senses 2005 30(Supplement 1):i33-i34; doi:10.1093/chemse/bjh099
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Chemical Senses Vol. 30 No. suppl 1 © Oxford University Press 2005; all rights reserved

Signal Transduction of Umami Taste: Insights from Knockout Mice

Minqing Rong1,2, Wei He1,2, Keiko Yasumatsu3, Zaza Kokrashvili1, Cristian A. Perez1, Bedrich Mosinger1, Yuzo Ninomiya3, Robert F. Margolskee1,2 and Sami Damak1,4

1 Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, 1 Gustave L. Levy Place, New York, NY 10029, USA 2 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, 1 Gustave L. Levy Place, New York, NY 10029, USA, 3 Section of Oral Neuroscience, Kyushu University, 3-1-1 Maidashi, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8582, Japan and 4 Nestlé Research Center, Vers-Chez-les-Blanc, CH-1000 Lausanne, Switzerland

Correspondence to be sent to: Sami Damak, e-mail: sami.damak@rdls.nestle.com

Key words: umami, taste, transgenic mice, nerve recordings, Trpm5, T1r3, gustducin, transducin

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   Introduction
 
The sense of taste is comprised of four basic qualities: sweet, bitter, salty and sour. Umami, a Japanese term for delicious, although controversial for many years as a distinct taste is now widely accepted as a fifth taste quality. Compounds that taste umami include glutamate salts such as monosodium and monopotassium glutamate (MSG and MPG, respectively), nucleotide monophosphate (IMP, GMP), certain peptides and amino acids such as aspartate. A particular property of umami is that the taste of glutamate is enhanced by monophosphate nucleotides. Psychophysical studies and conditioned taste aversion experiments showed that humans and mice distinguish the taste of MSG from the four basic taste qualities. The umami taste may have evolved to help animals ingest food that have high protein content . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   {alpha}-Gustducin mediates responses to umami, in addition to sweet and bitter compounds
 

   Rod {alpha}-transducin mediates responses to umami, but not to bitter or sweet compounds
 

   {alpha}-Gustducin, but not rod {alpha}-transducin, mediates the responses to IMP and IMP enhancement of MSG
 

   T1r1 and T1r3 are involved in the transduction of preference for MSG, but other receptors and/or pathways must exist
 

   Trpm5 and PLCß2 mediate much of the preference for MSG, but there are residual responses to umami in Trpm5 knockout mice
 

   Different pathways transduce the umami responses in the front and the back of the tongue
 

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