Food peptides activate bitter taste...( PHILADELPHIA (January 22 2008) -- Re...),Health
PHILADELPHIA (January 22, 2008) -- Researchers from the Monell Center and Tokyo University of Agriculture have used a novel molecular method to identify chemical compounds from common foods that activate human bitter taste receptors.
The findings, published in the journal Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, provide a practical means to manipulate food flavor in general and bitter taste in particular.
Identification of bitter taste compounds and their corresponding receptors opens doors to screening for specific bitter receptor inhibitors, said senior author Liquan Huang, PhD, a molecular biologist at Monell. Such inhibitors can be used to suppress unpleasantness and thereby increase palatability and acceptance of health-promoting bitter foods, such as green vegetables or soy products.
While a little bitterness is often considered a desirable component of a foods flavor, extensive bitterness can limit food acceptance.
About 25 different human bitter receptors have been identified from human genome sequences. However, only a few of these bitter receptors can be activated by known chemical compounds. The remainders are orphan receptors, meaning that the compounds that bind to and activate them have not been identified. Consequently, it is unclear how these orphan receptors contribute to bitter taste perception.
Huang and his collaborators deorphanized several bitter receptors by demonstrating that peptides from fermented foods can specifically stimulate human bitter taste receptors expressed in a cell culture system.
Fermented foods, such as cheese or miso, are characterized by bitter off-tastes. These foods also contain abundant quantities of peptides, which are short chains of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.
The results reveal the molecular identities of chemical food components responsible for the bitterness of fermented foods and demonstrate that bitter-tas
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| Contact: Leslie Stein stein@monell.org 267-519-4707 Monell Chemical Senses Center Source:Eurekalert |
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