Studies on Taste: Molecular Biology and Food Science

Taste is indispensable for vertebrate to find a proper way of living by selection of foods at their discretion. It is also a mainstay in the construction of human culture and the food industry, but no systematic information is available regarding the molecular logic of taste signaling and associated chemical entities. Against this backdrop, our research had bumble beginnings in the 1990s and then traced a unique path of development revealing major signaling pathways involving G protein-coupled receptors, Galphai2, PLC-beta2, IP(3)R3, PLA2IIa, TRPM5, KCNQ1, etc. The validity of our studies on the molecular biology of taste was verified by material science in the case of an enigmatic protein, neoculin, which converts sourness to sweetness. The study should provide new information for better understanding of taste-taste interactions which are important in food design.