Umami Taste
Organisms have complex and extraordinary tools for sensing their environments. These tools have been honed to enable them to efficiently navigate the world around them. As a result, each and every organism alive today is the product of natural selection. Over time, this acquired set of skills evolved into the five common senses; sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste. Taste is one of the most valuable ways an organism can interact with its environment, since the ability to identify and process the chemicals in food provides a wealth of information about the quality of the food being consumed (Yarmolinsky et al. 2009). The various chemicals an organism can perceive are categorized into five options; sour, salty, bitter, sweet, and umami (Chandrashekar
…show more content…
The two heteromers involved in sweet and umami taste perception were genetically modified in mice during their embryonic stage in order to manipulate the development of appropriate taste receptors (Damak et al. 2003). When the mouse had only intact Tas1r3 genes and not Tas1r1 or Tas1r2 genes, there was no evidence of perception for either sweet or umami tastes. The mice were indifferent to both taste modalities. Further, this study demonstrated that when the mice had functional Tas1r1 or Tas1r2 genes, but no functional Tas1r3 genes, the response to umami and sweet stimuli was significantly reduced. This led the researchers to conclude that the Tas1r3 gene is codependent on either Tas1r1 or Tas1r2 in order to produce taste cells capable of responding to stimuli, and vice versa to a lesser extent. Mice with only intact Tas1r3 genes experience a disadvantage outside of the laboratory; if these mice were forced to forage for their own food in nature, they would most likely die without the ability to taste either sweet or umami. The same phenomenon would occur to a lesser extent if the mice only had intact Tas1r1 or Tas1r2 genes. An organism is severely limited in its ability to locate and detect potential food sources without the ability to fully or partially taste sweet and umami compounds (Damak et al.
The two heteromers involved in sweet and umami taste perception were genetically modified in mice during their embryonic stage in order to manipulate the development of appropriate taste receptors (Damak et al. 2003). When the mouse had only intact Tas1r3 genes and not Tas1r1 or Tas1r2 genes, there was no evidence of perception for either sweet or umami tastes. The mice were indifferent to both taste modalities. Further, this study demonstrated that when the mice had functional Tas1r1 or Tas1r2 genes, but no functional Tas1r3 genes, the response to umami and sweet stimuli was significantly reduced. This led the researchers to conclude that the Tas1r3 gene is codependent on either Tas1r1 or Tas1r2 in order to produce taste cells capable of responding to stimuli, and vice versa to a lesser extent. Mice with only intact Tas1r3 genes experience a disadvantage outside of the laboratory; if these mice were forced to forage for their own food in nature, they would most likely die without the ability to taste either sweet or umami. The same phenomenon would occur to a lesser extent if the mice only had intact Tas1r1 or Tas1r2 genes. An organism is severely limited in its ability to locate and detect potential food sources without the ability to fully or partially taste sweet and umami compounds (Damak et al.