We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
An amino-acid taste receptor.
- Authors
Nelson, Greg; Chandrashekar, Jayaram; Hoon, Mark A; Feng, Luxin; Zhao, Grace; Ryba, Nicholas J P; Zuker, Charles S
- Abstract
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.
- Publication
Nature, 2002, Vol 416, Issue 6877, p199
- ISSN
0028-0836
- Publication type
Journal Article
- DOI
10.1038/nature726