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Can the tongue taste only sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami?

  • October 8, 2023
  • Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
  • Category: DPN Topics
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Can the tongue taste only sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami?

Subject :Science and tech

Section: Health

Context:

  • Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda first proposed umami as a basic taste — in addition to sweet, sour, salty and bitter — in the early 1900s. About eight decades later, the scientific community officially agreed with him.

Details:

  • Scientists have evidence of a sixth basic taste.
  • Researchers have found that the tongue responds to ammonium chloride through the same protein receptor that signals sour taste.
  • Scientists had earlier recognized that the tongue responds strongly to ammonium chloride but were unable to specify the tongue receptors that respond to it.
  • Recently, they uncovered the protein responsible for detecting sour taste.
  • That protein, called OTOP1, sits within cell membranes and forms a channel for hydrogen ions moving into the cell.
  • To confirm this, they turned to a technique that measures electrical conductivity, simulating how nerves conduct a signal. They measured how well the taste cells generated electrical responses called action potentials when ammonium chloride is introduced.
  • Taste bud cells from wildtype mice showed a sharp increase in action potentials after ammonium chloride was added while taste bud cells from the mice lacking OTOP1 failed to respond to the salt.
  • This confirmed their hypothesis that OTOP1 responds to the salt, generating an electrical signal in taste bud cells.

Source: TH

Science and tech tongue taste

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