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Sweet taste of heavy water

Hydrogen to deuterium isotopic substitution has only a minor effect on physical and chemical properties of water and, as such, is not supposed to influence its neutral taste. Here we conclusively demonstrate that humans are, nevertheless, able to distinguish D(2)O from H(2)O by taste. Indeed, highly...

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Autores principales: Ben Abu, Natalie, Mason, Philip E., Klein, Hadar, Dubovski, Nitzan, Ben Shoshan-Galeczki, Yaron, Malach, Einav, Pražienková, Veronika, Maletínská, Lenka, Tempra, Carmelo, Chamorro, Victor Cruces, Cvačka, Josef, Behrens, Maik, Niv, Masha Y., Jungwirth, Pavel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8024362/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33824405
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-01964-y
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author Ben Abu, Natalie
Mason, Philip E.
Klein, Hadar
Dubovski, Nitzan
Ben Shoshan-Galeczki, Yaron
Malach, Einav
Pražienková, Veronika
Maletínská, Lenka
Tempra, Carmelo
Chamorro, Victor Cruces
Cvačka, Josef
Behrens, Maik
Niv, Masha Y.
Jungwirth, Pavel
author_facet Ben Abu, Natalie
Mason, Philip E.
Klein, Hadar
Dubovski, Nitzan
Ben Shoshan-Galeczki, Yaron
Malach, Einav
Pražienková, Veronika
Maletínská, Lenka
Tempra, Carmelo
Chamorro, Victor Cruces
Cvačka, Josef
Behrens, Maik
Niv, Masha Y.
Jungwirth, Pavel
author_sort Ben Abu, Natalie
collection PubMed
description Hydrogen to deuterium isotopic substitution has only a minor effect on physical and chemical properties of water and, as such, is not supposed to influence its neutral taste. Here we conclusively demonstrate that humans are, nevertheless, able to distinguish D(2)O from H(2)O by taste. Indeed, highly purified heavy water has a distinctly sweeter taste than same-purity normal water and can add to perceived sweetness of sweeteners. In contrast, mice do not prefer D(2)O over H(2)O, indicating that they are not likely to perceive heavy water as sweet. HEK 293T cells transfected with the TAS1R2/TAS1R3 heterodimer and chimeric G-proteins are activated by D(2)O but not by H(2)O. Lactisole, which is a known sweetness inhibitor acting via the TAS1R3 monomer of the TAS1R2/TAS1R3, suppresses the sweetness of D(2)O in human sensory tests, as well as the calcium release elicited by D(2)O in sweet taste receptor-expressing cells. The present multifaceted experimental study, complemented by homology modelling and molecular dynamics simulations, resolves a long-standing controversy about the taste of heavy water, shows that its sweet taste is mediated by the human TAS1R2/TAS1R3 taste receptor, and opens way to future studies of the detailed mechanism of action.
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spelling pubmed-80243622021-04-21 Sweet taste of heavy water Ben Abu, Natalie Mason, Philip E. Klein, Hadar Dubovski, Nitzan Ben Shoshan-Galeczki, Yaron Malach, Einav Pražienková, Veronika Maletínská, Lenka Tempra, Carmelo Chamorro, Victor Cruces Cvačka, Josef Behrens, Maik Niv, Masha Y. Jungwirth, Pavel Commun Biol Article Hydrogen to deuterium isotopic substitution has only a minor effect on physical and chemical properties of water and, as such, is not supposed to influence its neutral taste. Here we conclusively demonstrate that humans are, nevertheless, able to distinguish D(2)O from H(2)O by taste. Indeed, highly purified heavy water has a distinctly sweeter taste than same-purity normal water and can add to perceived sweetness of sweeteners. In contrast, mice do not prefer D(2)O over H(2)O, indicating that they are not likely to perceive heavy water as sweet. HEK 293T cells transfected with the TAS1R2/TAS1R3 heterodimer and chimeric G-proteins are activated by D(2)O but not by H(2)O. Lactisole, which is a known sweetness inhibitor acting via the TAS1R3 monomer of the TAS1R2/TAS1R3, suppresses the sweetness of D(2)O in human sensory tests, as well as the calcium release elicited by D(2)O in sweet taste receptor-expressing cells. The present multifaceted experimental study, complemented by homology modelling and molecular dynamics simulations, resolves a long-standing controversy about the taste of heavy water, shows that its sweet taste is mediated by the human TAS1R2/TAS1R3 taste receptor, and opens way to future studies of the detailed mechanism of action. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-04-06 /pmc/articles/PMC8024362/ /pubmed/33824405 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-01964-y Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Ben Abu, Natalie
Mason, Philip E.
Klein, Hadar
Dubovski, Nitzan
Ben Shoshan-Galeczki, Yaron
Malach, Einav
Pražienková, Veronika
Maletínská, Lenka
Tempra, Carmelo
Chamorro, Victor Cruces
Cvačka, Josef
Behrens, Maik
Niv, Masha Y.
Jungwirth, Pavel
Sweet taste of heavy water
title Sweet taste of heavy water
title_full Sweet taste of heavy water
title_fullStr Sweet taste of heavy water
title_full_unstemmed Sweet taste of heavy water
title_short Sweet taste of heavy water
title_sort sweet taste of heavy water
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8024362/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33824405
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-01964-y
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