Unlocking the Secret: How Your Tongue’s Hidden Sense of Smell Transforms Every Bite
The team used a method known as “calcium imaging” so that they could see how the cultured taste cells responded to smell. Astonishingly, when the human taste cells were exposed to odor molecules, the taste cells responded as olfactory cells would.
The study provides scientists the first demonstration of functional olfactory receptors in human taste cells. This suggests that olfactory receptors, which helps us sense smell, may play a role in how we detect taste by interacting with the taste receptor cells on our tongue.
This surprising conclusion has been supported by other experiments by the Monell research team, which also showed that a single taste cell can have both taste and olfactory receptors.
“The presence of olfactory receptors and taste receptors in the same cell will provide us with exciting opportunities to study interactions between odor and taste stimuli on the tongue,” Ozdener said in a statement. The study was published in the online version of the journal Chemical Senses ahead of its print.
But these sensory experiments are only the beginning. Next, scientists plan to determine whether olfactory receptors are located on a specific taste cell type.
For example, whether they are located in sweet-detecting cells or salt-detecting cells. Scientists also plan to further explore how odor molecules manipulate taste cell responses and, perhaps by extension, our taste perception.
After learning about our tongue’s ability to both taste and smell things, read about how humans may have a better sense of smell than dogs. Then, learn the story of the poison garden at Alnwick.
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