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Cells of many flavors

23.08.2020

It is believed that the whole variety of tastes is made up of five basic tastes, that is, bitter, salty, sour, sweet and the taste of protein, or umami. Each of them has its own receptor cells that feel only sweet, or only salty, etc., and from the combinations of signals from these very specialized receptors, a complex taste picture is obtained.

However, in addition to very specialized taste cells, there are also not very specialized ones. For example, not so long ago it became known that sour taste receptors also feel the taste of water (which also suggests that the five main tastes are not limited to). Experiments at the State University of New York at Buffalo suggest that some taste cells can sense more than two tastes.

By turning off specialized cells for a particular taste in mice, the researchers found that that taste is still felt—that is, some other cells accept it. Such cells were found: they actually responded to a wide range of molecules with bitter, sweet, sour and protein tastes.

At the same time, "cells of many tastes" turned out to be necessary for the brain to perceive signals from "cells of one taste." Each receptor cell has a special molecular apparatus, thanks to which a signal from the external environment is transmitted to the brain. And when a protein was turned off in mouse "cells of many tastes", without which they could not notify the brain of any taste, the brain ceased to perceive signals from cells that respond to only one taste, although no one turned off anything in "cells of one taste" . The mouse with the "cells of many tastes" turned off continued to drink bitter water, although specialized bitter taste cells should have alerted it to unpleasant bitterness.

It is likely that those taste cells that sense many tastes not only sense all of these tastes, but also help coordinate signals from specialized taste cells. In this case, the neurobiology of taste sensations turns out to be much more complicated than we thought. What, however, was to be expected: in order to get all the huge variety of taste sensations from the five basic tastes, the taste buds must interact with each other in a very complex way, and the nerve signals from them must influence each other in a complex way.

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