The past decade has witnessed a consolidation and refinement of the extraordinary
progress made in taste research. This Review describes recent advances in our …

Taste buds are aggregates of 50–100 polarized neuroepithelial cells that detect nutrients
and other compounds. Combined analyses of gene expression and cellular function reveal …

Five canonical tastes, bitter, sweet, umami (amino acid), salty, and sour (acid), are detected
by animals as diverse as fruit flies and humans, consistent with a near-universal drive to …

The variety of taste sensations, including sweet, umami, bitter, sour, and salty, arises from
diverse taste cells, each of which expresses specific taste sensor molecules and associated …

Recognition of sweet, bitter and umami tastes requires the non-vesicular release from taste
bud cells of ATP, which acts as a neurotransmitter to activate afferent neural gustatory …

The sense of taste is a specialized chemosensory system dedicated to the evaluation of food
and drink. Despite the fact that vertebrates and insects have independently evolved distinct …

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) has been well established as an important extracellular
ligand of autocrine signaling, intercellular communication, and neurotransmission with …

P2X receptors are membrane cation channels gated by extracellular ATP. Seven P2X
receptor subunits (P2X1-7) are widely distributed in excitable and nonexcitable cells of …

Tuft cells—rare solitary chemosensory cells in mucosal epithelia—are undergoing intense
scientific scrutiny fueled by recent discovery of unsuspected connections to type 2 immunity …

While gap junctions support the exchange of a number of molecules between neighboring
cells, connexin hemichannels provide communication between the cytosol and the …