Behavioral genetics and taste

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

This review focuses on behavioral genetic studies of sweet, umami, bitter and salt taste responses in mammals. Studies involving mouse inbred strain comparisons and genetic analyses, and their impact on elucidation of taste receptors and transduction mechanisms are discussed. Finally, the effect of genetic variation in taste responsiveness on complex traits such as drug intake is considered. Recent advances in development of genomic resources make behavioral genetics a powerful approach for understanding mechanisms of taste.

Related collections

Most cited references 247

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Human receptors for sweet and umami taste.

Xiaodong Li, Lena Staszewski, Hong Xu … (2002)

The three members of the T1R class of taste-specific G protein-coupled receptors have been hypothesized to function in combination as heterodimeric sweet taste receptors. Here we show that human T1R2/T1R3 recognizes diverse natural and synthetic sweeteners. In contrast, human T1R1/T1R3 responds to the umami taste stimulus l-glutamate, and this response is enhanced by 5'-ribonucleotides, a hallmark of umami taste. The ligand specificities of rat T1R2/T1R3 and T1R1/T1R3 correspond to those of their human counterparts. These findings implicate the T1Rs in umami taste and suggest that sweet and umami taste receptors share a common subunit.

0 comments Cited 309 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

An amino-acid taste receptor.

Greg Nelson, Jayaram Chandrashekar, Mark A Hoon … (2002)

The sense of taste provides animals with valuable information about the nature and quality of food. Mammals can recognize and respond to a diverse repertoire of chemical entities, including sugars, salts, acids and a wide range of toxic substances. Several amino acids taste sweet or delicious (umami) to humans, and are attractive to rodents and other animals. This is noteworthy because L-amino acids function as the building blocks of proteins, as biosynthetic precursors of many biologically relevant small molecules, and as metabolic fuel. Thus, having a taste pathway dedicated to their detection probably had significant evolutionary implications. Here we identify and characterize a mammalian amino-acid taste receptor. This receptor, T1R1+3, is a heteromer of the taste-specific T1R1 and T1R3 G-protein-coupled receptors. We demonstrate that T1R1 and T1R3 combine to function as a broadly tuned L-amino-acid sensor responding to most of the 20 standard amino acids, but not to their D-enantiomers or other compounds. We also show that sequence differences in T1R receptors within and between species (human and mouse) can significantly influence the selectivity and specificity of taste responses.

0 comments Cited 287 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

The receptors for mammalian sweet and umami taste.

Grace Q Zhao, Yifeng Zhang, Mark A Hoon … (2003)

Sweet and umami (the taste of monosodium glutamate) are the main attractive taste modalities in humans. T1Rs are candidate mammalian taste receptors that combine to assemble two heteromeric G-protein-coupled receptor complexes: T1R1+3, an umami sensor, and T1R2+3, a sweet receptor. We now report the behavioral and physiological characterization of T1R1, T1R2, and T1R3 knockout mice. We demonstrate that sweet and umami taste are strictly dependent on T1R-receptors, and show that selective elimination of T1R-subunits differentially abolishes detection and perception of these two taste modalities. To examine the basis of sweet tastant recognition and coding, we engineered animals expressing either the human T1R2-receptor (hT1R2), or a modified opioid-receptor (RASSL) in sweet cells. Expression of hT1R2 in mice generates animals with humanized sweet taste preferences, while expression of RASSL drives strong attraction to a synthetic opiate, demonstrating that sweet cells trigger dedicated behavioral outputs, but their tastant selectivity is determined by the nature of the receptors.

0 comments Cited 281 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

All references

Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Neurosci

Title: BMC Neuroscience

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1471-2202

Publication date Collection: 2007

Publication date (Electronic): 18 September 2007

Volume: 8

Issue: Suppl 3

Page: S3

Affiliations

[1 ]Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN 38163, USA

[2 ]Monell Chemical Senses Center, 3500 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3308, USA

Article

Publisher ID: 1471-2202-8-S3-S3

DOI: 10.1186/1471-2202-8-S3-S3

PMC ID: 1995453

PubMed ID: 17903279

SO-VID: 941ede83-45c9-465a-87f8-e21571f2629a

License:

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Behavioral genetics and taste

Read this article at

Abstract

Related collections

Behavioral phenotypization of a mouse model for Alzheimer's: PDAPP = Tg(APPV717F)109Ili

Most cited references 247

Human receptors for sweet and umami taste.

An amino-acid taste receptor.

The receptors for mammalian sweet and umami taste.

Author and article information

Journal

Affiliations

Article

History

Categories

Comments

Comment on this article

Similar content 588

Cited by 5

Most referenced authors 1,326