Endocrine Abstracts

Taste is an overriding determinant of food choice and leads to the development of preferences impacting on nutrition and eventually health. To investigate the molecular basis of gustation and its link to nutritional behaviour, we isolated all 25 members of the human bitter taste receptor gene family, TAS2Rs, and established their expression profile on the tongue. Using functional assays we identified the cognate bitter compounds for ∼half of the encoded receptors. Our da...