New insights into peptide bitterness

Beschreibung

New insights into peptide bitterness
Silvia Schaefer, Florian Ziegler, Tatjana Lang, Alexandra Steuer, Antonella Di Pizio, and Maik Behrens
Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany.
Generally, five basic taste qualities are distinguished; with their help, vertebrates determine whether a food source may contain favourable or unpleasant compounds. The bitter taste is particularly decisive here, as it initiates an innate aversive reaction to avoid the ingestion of potentially toxic substances. A set of ~25 G protein-coupled receptors is responsible for bitter sensing in humans. The discovery of nutritionally important and partially essential peptides and amino acids eliciting bitter taste raised questions about the underlying biological meaning. Previous studies revealed the five human bitter receptors TAS2R1, -R4, -R14, -R39, and -R46 as peptide receptors with the tripeptide 3-Trp being the strongest activator. As bitter peptides are abundant in various foods, it would be advantageous to identify the crucial characteristics accountable for the bitter off-taste of these macronutrients to increase consumers’ food acceptance and its quality.
In our studies, we were able to shed light on the sensing of bitter peptides. Firstly, an overlapping receptor activation profile between bitter peptides and the endogenous agonists bile acids was discovered. Further analysis revealed a phylogenetic conservation of this trait between very distantly related vertebrate species, underscoring its importance. Functional analyses of mutants of the human TAS2R14, revealed crucial amino acids for agonist binding for each compound class. With this data, a computational model was generated and partially overlapping binding pockets were identified. Altogether, our findings provide new insights in the structural features of bitter peptide detection.
Funding was provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (BE 2091/7-1 & PI 1672/3-1).

Zeitraum	25 Juni 2024
Ereignistitel	International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste (ISOT) XIV
Veranstaltungstyp	Konferenz
Ort	Reykjavik, IslandAuf Karte anzeigen
Bekanntheitsgrad	International