Development of Chemical Sensing System for Quantifying Deliciousness

人的味觉“美味”受各种因素的影响，质地、颜色、温度等，各种物理传感器可以量化质地或颜色。但是目前还没有一种化学传感器能够量化味觉或嗅觉，在本研究中，我们尝试使用多通道味觉传感器来测量“美味”。多通道味觉传感器由几种脂质/聚合物膜组成，用于将有关味觉物质的信息转化为电信号。通过测量膜电位的变化，研究了不同味觉物质对膜的响应，并将多通道味觉传感器应用于牛奶中，重点研究了热处理、均质处理和脂肪成分引起的味觉变化。有人指出，这些因素在很大程度上影响牛奶的美味。传感器输出与蛋白质的丰富度和变性程度有很高的相关性。至于均匀化处理，传感器显示出比人类更高的辨别能力。并利用该味觉传感器对几种牛奶的脂肪成分进行了测量。这些结果表明，利用多通道味觉传感器成功地进行了食品美味度的定量研究。

The human taste sensation "deliciousness" is affected by various factors, texture, color, temperature, etc. Various physical sensor can quantify texture or color. But no chemical sensor has been able to quantify taste or odor senses so far.In this study, we tried to measure "deliciousness" using multichannel taste sensor. A multichannel taste sensor is composed of several kind of lipid/polimer membranes for transforming information about taste substances into electric signals. Responses of the lipid membranes to various kinds of taste substances were investigated by measuring changes of membrane potentialsA multichannel taste sensor was applied to milk by focusing on the taste variance caused by heat treatment, homogenization treatment and fatty component. It was pointed out that these factors considerably affect the deliciousness of milk. The sensor output showed high correlations with richness and the degree of protein denaturation. As for the homogenization treatment, the sensor showed higher discrimination ability than humans. The fatty component of several kinds of milk was also measured using the taste sensor. These results imply that study of quantification of deliciousness of foodstuffs was successfully made using the multichannel taste sensor.