The sweet and the bitter of mammalian taste

Abstract

The discovery of two families of mammalian taste receptors has provided important insights into taste recognition and taste perception. Recent studies have examined the receptors and signaling pathways that mediate sweet, bitter, and amino acid taste detection in mammals. These studies demonstrate that taste cells are selectively tuned to different taste modalities and clarify the logic of taste coding in the periphery. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.