Sweet and umami taste: Natural products, their chemosensory targets, and beyond

(Figure Presented) A question of taste: Much of our appreciation of food is due to the excitement of the "sweet" and "umami" taste. This Review gives a survey of compounds that elicit the sweet or umami taste. It will highlight the activation of the taste receptors and signal transduction, which induces neural activity and is conveyed to the cerebral cortex to represent the taste quality (the picture shows a binding site of a sweet taste receptor.