New research from Caltech shows that sour-sensing taste cells play an important role in detecting water on the tongue.
The work, appearing in a paper in the May 29 issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, was done in the laboratory of Yuki Oka, assistant professor of biology.
“The tongue can detect various key nutrient factors, called tastants — such as sodium, sugar, and amino acids — through taste,” says Oka. “However, how we sense water in the mouth was unknown. Many insect species are known to ‘taste’ water, so we imagined that mammals also might have a machinery in the taste system for water detection.”
Taste cells relay information about tastants to the brain via nerves called the taste nerves. First author and graduate student Dhruv Zocchi measured the electrical responses from taste nerves in mice to various tastants as well as to water. The nerves responded in predictable ways to different basic tastes — sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami — but they were also stimulated by pure water. “This was exciting because it implied that some taste cells are capable of detecting water,” Zocchi says. Read more
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