New Molecular and Cell-based Approaches to assess Food Astringency and Bitterness

Introduction

Taste properties are vital to humans: they impact human survival, nutrition, health, and well-being. The problem of unpleasant taste properties, namely bitter- or astringent-tasting compounds, is emerging in many diverse research fields.

Relevance of Research Fields

Beyond the obvious interest in food science and nutrition, as well as in the improvement and selection of crops, human taste disorders and drug discovery domains could also benefit from research on astringency and bitterness.

Project Overview

Crossing the boundaries among different fields, BeTASTy goes beyond the current state-of-the-art of food-oriented research to respond to the prominent challenges on astringency and bitterness. This proposal will provide an in-depth mechanistic and functional understanding of the main physical-chemical events triggering the physiological and neural perception of astringency.

Innovative Approach

An innovative approach will be considered, focusing on the main oral key pieces, namely salivary proteins and epithelia, while emphasizing the role of mechanoreceptors in that sensation. BeTASTy will also unveil how, for some compounds, astringency and bitterness can go together by utilizing an innovative all-in-one model.

Sensory Differences

Additionally, the individual features that account for sensory differences will be deepened by a pioneering approach based on human organoids and electroencephalography.

Final Goal

The final goal will be the creation of cutting-edge cell-free biosensors based on the identified orally active mechano- and bitter taste receptors to assess astringency and bitterness, respectively, while overcoming the main drawbacks of the existing (cell-based) ones.

Multidisciplinary Engagement

Endowed with a truly differentiated and disruptive character, this groundbreaking project will engage food chemistry, biochemistry, neuroscience, sensory analysis, and biotechnology fields of research to outdo the state-of-the-art.

Conclusion

Only an ambitious and multidisciplinary proposal will yield scientific breakthroughs on the biochemical-neural-perceptual triad events of these taste properties, which will eventually enable the tailoring of these properties.