An amino-acid taste receptor

Greg Nelson, Jayaram Chandrashekar, Mark A. Hoon, Luxin Feng, Grace Zhao, Nicholas J. P. Ryba and Charles S. Zuker ()
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Greg Nelson: University of California at San Diego
Jayaram Chandrashekar: University of California at San Diego
Mark A. Hoon: National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institutes of Health
Luxin Feng: University of California at San Diego
Grace Zhao: University of California at San Diego
Nicholas J. P. Ryba: National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institutes of Health
Charles S. Zuker: University of California at San Diego

Nature, 2002, vol. 416, issue 6877, 199-202

Abstract: 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 substances1. Several amino acids taste sweet or delicious (umami) to humans, and are attractive to rodents and other animals2. 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.

Date: 2002
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DOI: 10.1038/nature726

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