Taste Receptor Signaling

All organisms have the ability to detect chemicals in the environment, which likely evolved out of organisms’ needs to detect food sources and avoid potentially harmful compounds. The taste system detects chemicals and is used to determine whether potential food items will be ingested or rejected. The sense of taste detects five known taste qualities: bitter, sweet, salty, sour, and umami, which is the detection of amino acids, specifically glutamate. These different taste qualities encompass a wide variety of chemicals that differ in their structure and as a result, the peripheral taste utilizes numerous and diverse mechanisms to detect these stimuli. In this chapter, we will summarize what is currently known about the signaling mechanisms used by taste cells to transduce stimulus signals.