What do you know about olfactory receptors and the smell of your tongue?

Feeling with your tongue can be a real thing, but can the identification of functional olfactory receptors in human taste cells open the door to new approaches to changing the taste of food?

According to scientists at the Monell Center in the United States, functional olfactory receptors, sensors that detect odors in the nose, are also present in human taste cells on the tongue. The results suggest that interactions between the senses of smell and taste, the main components of food taste, can begin on the tongue and not on the brain, as previously thought.

Can odorous molecules modulate the perception of taste?

"Our research could help explain how odor molecules modulate the perception of taste," said lead author of the study, Mehmet Hakan Ozdener, a cell biologist at Monell. "This could lead to the development of odor-based taste modifiers that can help combat the excessive consumption of salt, sugar, and fat badociated with diet-related diseases, such as food and nutrition. 39, obesity and diabetes. "

While many people badociate taste with flavor, the distinctive flavor of most foods and drinks comes more from smell than taste.

Taste, which detects sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami molecules on the tongue, has evolved as a guardian to badess the nutritional value and potential toxicity of what we put in our mouths. The brain combines information from taste, smell, and other senses to create the multimodal sensation of flavor.

Until now, taste and smell were considered as independent sensory systems that did not interact until their respective information reached the brain.

Details of the study

Published in Chemical Senses, Monell researchers have developed live taste cells in culture. Using genetic and biochemical methods to probe taste cell cultures, researchers have found that human taste cells contain many key molecules known to be present in olfactory receptors.

They then used a method called calcium imaging to show that cultured taste cells responded to odorous molecules in a manner similar to olfactory receptor cells.

Together, the results provide the first demonstration of functional olfactory receptors in human taste cells, suggesting that olfactory receptors may play a role in the taste system by interacting with taste receptor cells located on the tongue.

In addition to providing insight into the nature and mechanisms of taste-smell interactions, the results can also provide a tool to better understand how the olfactory system detects odors. Scientists still do not know which molecules activate the vast majority of the 400 types of functional human olfactory receptors.

Since cultured taste cells react to odors, they could potentially be used as screening tests to help identify molecules that bind to specific human olfactory receptors.

In the future, scientists will investigate whether olfactory receptors are preferably located on a specific type of taste cell, eg, sugar or salt detecting cells. Other studies will examine how odor molecules alter taste cell responses and, ultimately, the perception of human taste.