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THE EVERYDAY SENSATION of taste is a complex combination of inputs and molecular machinery that gets decoded in the brain as sensation. This wraps up a very brief tour of this awesome bio-design, and will contrast with next week's Fragment on the greater known complexity of the molecular basis of smell. View in LinkedIn

BIOLOGICAL CONUNDRUM. "Foods are consumed as macromolecules (e.g., proteins, starches and triglycerides) not isolated components. However, the gustatory system is configured to respond to single units and breakdown products such as amino acids, free fatty acids, and mono- and di-glycerides." https://lnkd.in/e6J_idS View in LinkedIn

"BITTER TASTE has the onerous task of preventing the ingestion of a large number of structurally distinct toxic compounds. Remarkably, despite the vastness of this repertoire, these compounds all evoke such a similar sensation that we simply know them as ‘bitter’. Bitter taste is mediated by a family of ~30 highly divergent GPCRs (the T2Rs). T2R genes are selectively expressed in subsets of TRCs distinct from those containing sweet and umami receptors." https://lnkd.in/eh5--gC View in LinkedIn

TASTE HAS BEEN HIJACKED at the expense of nutrition in our modern world. "There is a growing interest in developing novel taste stimuli and taste modifiers for humans and other animals." Cooking media almost exclusively focuses on taste, and rarely mentions nutrition. We are in an era of immense disconnect between the two. https://lnkd.in/epb6AAV View in LinkedIn

TASTE APPEARS LIMITED. Unlike other taste receptors, which are coded by two families of receptors each, the bitter receptor is coded by about 30 molecules. Its function is to protect against poisons and toxins. Regardless, the number of known taste receptors is very small (~40) and the taste repertoire equally small, at ~10 sensations upper limit. This is in sharp contrast to the olfactory system. https://lnkd.in/eh5--gC View in LinkedIn

"TASTE is in charge of evaluating the nutritious content of food and preventing the ingestion of toxic substances. Sweet taste permits the identification of energy-rich nutrients, umami allows the recognition of amino acids, salt taste ensures the proper dietary electrolyte balance, and sour and bitter warn against the intake of potentially noxious and/or poison- ous chemicals." https://lnkd.in/eh5--gC View in LinkedIn

If taste follows the illuminations of smell, it will turn out to be a more complex and nuanced system than some may believe. View in LinkedIn

TASTE CODING at the periphery is a case of "elegant simplicity. Contrary to what was generally believed, it is now clear that distinct cellular types expressing unique receptors are tuned can to detect each of the five basic tastes...Importantly, receptor cells for each taste quality function as dedicated sensors wired to elicit stereotypic responses." Overly-optimistic. https://lnkd.in/eh5--gC View in LinkedIn

CODED SIGNALS. "Taste afferent nerve fibers transmit information from taste buds to the brain. How the activation of receptor and presynaptic cells during gustatory stimulation translates into a neural code that specifies different taste qualities (sweet, bitter, etc) remains unclear." https://lnkd.in/edXs5uh View in LinkedIn

DIVERSE DISTRIBUTION. "Although alpha-gustucin, TRPM5, TIRs, and T2RS were discovered in the taste system, it took little time to find that these molecules were not tast-specific. Indeed, there is growing evidence for the expression of "taste transduction" molecules throughout the gastrointestinal and respiratory systems (and perhaps other tissues as well)." https://lnkd.in/e8rhRgW View in LinkedIn