Gustatory system articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Perception and appreciation of food flavour depends on many factors, posing a challenge for effective prediction. Here, the authors combine extensive chemical and sensory analyses of 250 commercial Belgian beers to train machine learning models that enable flavour and consumer appreciation prediction.

    • Michiel Schreurs
    • , Supinya Piampongsant
    •  & Kevin J. Verstrepen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the larval environment influences the sensory characteristics of the future adult is largely unknown. Here, using Drosophila as a model, the authors show that the presence of certain bacterial species during the larval stage modify the gustatory capacities of the future adult flies.

    • Martina Montanari
    • , Gérard Manière
    •  & Julien Royet

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The genetic identity of taste-responsive neurons has not been determined. The authors describe neurons in the gustatory region of the parabrachial nucleus that express the transcription factor Satb2, project to taste-associated regions, and modulate taste preferences.

    • Brooke C. Jarvie
    • , Jane Y. Chen
    •  & Richard D. Palmiter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hunger modulates perception of good and bad tastes. Here, the authors report that orexigenic AgRP neurons in the hypothalamus mediate these effects through glutamatergic lateral hypothalamic neurons that send distinct projections to the lateral septum and lateral habenula.

    • Ou Fu
    • , Yuu Iwai
    •  & Ken-ichiro Nakajima

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Previous research shows how taste types are represented across regions of the brain in non-human animals. Here, the authors examine how four basic tastes are represented in the human brain, showing evidence of the human gustatory cortex in the insula.

    • Junichi Chikazoe
    • , Daniel H. Lee
    •  & Adam K. Anderson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Taste sensilla are Drosophila sensory organs containing taste neurons, which have differential tuning for bitter compounds. Here, the authors systematically examine what combinations of gustatory receptor genes confer a specific taste response profile in different bitter taste neurons.

    • Ha Yeon Sung
    • , Yong Taek Jeong
    •  & Seok Jun Moon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Characterization of gustatory neural pathways has suffered due to a lack of molecular markers. Here, the authors report single cell RNA sequencing and unbiased transcriptome analyses to reveal major distinctions between gustatory and somatosensory neurons and subclusters of gustatory neurons with unique molecular and functional profiles.

    • Gennady Dvoryanchikov
    • , Damian Hernandez
    •  & Nirupa Chaudhari

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nutrients taste perception is mediated by T1r receptors that discriminate specific tastes among their wide diversity. Here the authors present crystal structures of the ligand-binding domains of the fish T1r2-T1r3 receptor, providing a structural framework for its ligand recognition.

    • Nipawan Nuemket
    • , Norihisa Yasui
    •  & Atsuko Yamashita

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying food texture detection are poorly understood. Here the authors show thatDrosophilacan discriminate food texture when feeding, and that this ability depends on NOMPC, a mechanosensory channel expressed in gustatory sensilla neurons.

    • Juan Antonio Sánchez-Alcañiz
    • , Giovanna Zappia
    •  & Richard Benton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How different sensory modalities interact to control feeding is poorly understood. Here, authors show that in Drosophila, activation of labellar mechanosensory neurons causes inhibition of sweet-sensing gustatory receptor neurons, as a result, Drosophilaprefer soft food at the expense of sweetness.

    • Yong Taek Jeong
    • , Soo Min Oh
    •  & Seok Jun Moon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bitter taste evokes aversive behaviour in animals, but little is known about the central nervous system mechanisms that convey this taste modality. Hückesfeld et al. identify a set of second order neurons in Drosophilathat contain hugin neuropeptide and are responsible for conveying bitter taste to the protocerebrum.

    • Sebastian Hückesfeld
    • , Marc Peters
    •  & Michael J. Pankratz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While gustatory systems have been extensively studied in adult Drosophila, not much is known about taste coding at the larval stage. Here, the authors investigate gustatory receptor neurons in larvae and find single neurons are capable of responding to more than one taste modality.

    • Lena van Giesen
    • , Luis Hernandez-Nunez
    •  & Simon G. Sprecher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It remains unclear whether any set of the 68 gustatory receptors expressed in Drosophilacomprise a cation channel that responds to an aversive chemical. Here the authors identify three gustatory receptors that are both necessary and sufficient to form a channel that confers sensitivity to a noxious tastant.

    • Jaewon Shim
    • , Youngseok Lee
    •  & Seok Jun Moon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How taste information is encoded and transmitted from the periphery to the cortex is not well understood. Here the authors provide evidence for population-based coding of taste by demonstrating that more than half of individual geniculate ganglion neurons are broadly tuned to basic taste stimuli.

    • An Wu
    • , Gennady Dvoryanchikov
    •  & Stephen D. Roper

  • Article |

    Sweet taste plays a key role in promoting ingestion of nutritionally rich sources of carbohydrates. Here, the authors demonstrate that the pharyngeal sense organs in adult Drosophilaare important for directing the sustained consumption of sweet compounds.

    • Emily E. LeDue
    • , Yu-Chieh Chen
    •  & Michael D. Gordon

  • Article |

    Taste detection in Drosophila melanogasterhas been well characterized for bitter and sweet stimuli. In this study, the authors characterize taste detection for acids and find that they are detected by a subset of bitter taste neurons, and that they inhibit the responses of sweet-sensing neurons to sugar.

    • Sandhya Charlu
    • , Zev Wisotsky
    •  & Anupama Dahanukar

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