ABSTRACT
Receptors play a critical role in all forms of sensory signaling. In the chemical senses taste and smell, detection of and discrimination between structurally diverse molecules are determined by interaction between these stimuli and their receptors. Taste and smell are encoded through these interactions and events downstream can only be involved in processing this information. Therefore, chemical stimuli that can be distinguished by animals must result in distinct patterns of receptor activation. Consequently, elucidating the nature, distribution, sensitivity, and specificity of taste receptors is fundamental to understanding the sense of taste itself. In this chapter, the methods that have been used to try to identify taste receptors for bitter, sweet, and umami tastes, and current knowledge about these receptors as well as problems that remain to be solved are reviewed.
