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Chemical Senses Advance Access published online on January 29, 2008
Chemical Senses, doi:10.1093/chemse/bjm088
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Drosophila melanogaster Prefers Compounds Perceived Sweet by Humans

Beth Gordesky-Gold, Natasha Rivers, Osama M. Ahmed and Paul A.S. Breslin

Monell Chemical Senses Center, 3500 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA

Correspondence to be sent to: Paul A.S. Breslin, Monell Chemical Senses Center, 3500 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. e-mail: breslin{at}monell.org


  Abstract

To understand the functional similarities of fly and mammalian taste receptors, we used a top–down approach that first established the fly sweetener–response profile. We employed the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, an omnivorous human commensal, and determined its sensitivity to an extended set of stimuli that humans find sweet. Flies were tested with all sweeteners in 2 assays that measured their taste reactivity (proboscis extension assay) and their ingestive preferences (free roaming ingestion choice test). A total of 21 sweeteners, comprised of 11 high-potency sweeteners, 2 amino acids, 5 sugars, 2 sugar alcohols, and a sweet salt (PbCl2), were tested in both assays. We found that wild-type Drosophila responded appetitively to most high-potency sweeteners preferred by humans, even those not considered sweet by rodents or new world monkeys. The similarities in taste preferences for sweeteners suggest that frugivorous/omnivorous apes and flies have evolved promiscuous carbohydrate taste detectors with similar affinities for myriad high-potency sweeteners. Whether these perceptual parallels are the result of convergent evolution of saccharide receptor–binding mechanisms remains to be determined.

Key words: comparative taste, convergent evolution, detection, high-potency sweeteners, ingestion, taste

Accepted 11 December 2007


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