An amino-acid taste receptor
An amino-acid taste receptor
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DOI：
10.1038/nature726
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发表时间：
2002-03-14
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Zuker, CS
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Nelson, G;Chandrashekar, J;Zuker, CS
味觉为动物提供了有关食物性质和质量的宝贵信息。哺乳动物能够识别各种化学物质并作出反应，包括糖、盐、酸和各种有毒物质(1)。几种氨基酸对人类来说尝起来很甜或很美味（鲜味），对啮齿动物和其他动物也很有吸引力(2)。这是值得注意的，因为l -氨基酸作为蛋白质的构建块，作为许多生物相关小分子的生物合成前体，以及作为代谢燃料。因此，拥有一条专门用于检测它们的味觉通路可能具有重要的进化意义。在这里，我们鉴定和表征哺乳动物氨基酸味觉受体。这种受体，T1R1+3，是味觉特异性T1R1和T1R3 g蛋白偶联受体的异聚体。我们证明，T1R1和T1R3结合起来作为一个广泛调谐的l -氨基酸传感器，响应大多数20种标准氨基酸，但不响应它们的d -对映体或其他化合物。我们还表明，物种（人和小鼠）内和物种之间T1R受体的序列差异可以显著影响味觉反应的选择性和特异性。
The sense of taste provides animals with valuable information about the nature and quality of food. Mammals can recognize and respond to a diverse repertoire of chemical entities, including sugars, salts, acids and a wide range of toxic substances(1). Several amino acids taste sweet or delicious (umami) to humans, and are attractive to rodents and other animals(2). This is noteworthy because L-amino acids function as the building blocks of proteins, as biosynthetic precursors of many biologically relevant small molecules, and as metabolic fuel. Thus, having a taste pathway dedicated to their detection probably had significant evolutionary implications. Here we identify and characterize a mammalian amino-acid taste receptor. This receptor, T1R1+3, is a heteromer of the taste-specific T1R1 and T1R3 G-protein-coupled receptors. We demonstrate that T1R1 and T1R3 combine to function as a broadly tuned L-amino-acid sensor responding to most of the 20 standard amino acids, but not to their D-enantiomers or other compounds. We also show that sequence differences in T1R receptors within and between species (human and mouse) can significantly influence the selectivity and specificity of taste responses.