Dear Editor, Among all the essential trace metals,zinc is of particular importance for its huge panoply of biological functions.As a pivotal element for hundreds of enzymes,either scarcity or accumulation of body zinc can lead to severe disorders(Maret,2017).Therefore,body zinc must be tightly regulated in order to keep a precise amount that is sufficient for cells'survival but does not cause toxicity.As diet is the major source of trace elements including zinc,animals must adjust their feeding amount and preference to avoid scarcity or accumulation.However,how animal utilize their gustatory organs to detect zinc in food and whether the taste is reg-ulated with body zinc level are unknown.Metals often cause the sense of taste termed as metallic taste.While sodium of certain concentration range delivers hedonic salty taste,salt solutions of most metals taste aversive.It was reported that zinc,copper and other heavy metal ions trigger an unpleasant sense of astringent/drying,sour or bitter.Although taste receptor cells were found essential for the detection of some divalent ions,the molecular mechanisms for this detection are largely elusive.Recently,the receptors for calcium were unambiguously identified in fruit fly(Lee et al.,2018).However,a full repertoire of receptors for sensing divalent ions is still lacking.

Rui Luo;Yuxiang Zhang;Yinjun Jia;Yan Zhang;Zongyang Li;Jieqing Zhao;Ting Liu;Wei Zhang

School of Life Sciences,IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research,Tsinghua University,Beijing 100084,China;Tsinghua-Peking Center for Life Sciences,Beijing 100084,China

蛋白质与细胞

[1]Rui Luo;Yuxiang Zhang;Yinjun Jia;Yan Zhang;Zongyang Li;Jieqing Zhao;Ting Liu;Wei Zhang-.Molecular basis and homeostatic regulation of Zinc taste)[J].蛋白质与细胞,2022(06):462-469

panoply,Maret,astringent

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