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

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 sense of taste allows animals to sample chemicals in the environment prior to ingestion.
Of the five basic tastes, sour, the taste of acids, had remained among the most mysterious …

The epithelial sodium channel (ENaC) is composed of three homologous subunits and
allows the flow of Na+ ions across high resistance epithelia, maintaining body salt and water …

Condiments (such as sodium chloride and glutamate sodium) cause consumers to ingest
too much sodium and may lead to a variety of diseases, thus decreasing their quality of life …

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 …

Sodium taste regulates salt intake. The amiloride-sensitive epithelial sodium channel
(ENaC) is the Na+ sensor in taste cells mediating attraction to sodium salts. However, cells …

Salt taste in mammals can trigger two divergent behavioural responses. In general,
concentrated saline solutions elicit robust behavioural aversion, whereas low concentrations …

The tongue is a complex multifunctional organ that interacts and senses both interoceptively
and exteroceptively. Although it is easily visible to almost all of us, it is relatively …

The recently discovered epithelial sodium channel (ENaC)/degenerin (DEG) gene family
encodes sodium channels involved in various cell functions in metazoans. Subfamilies …