Taste: Five Primary Tastants
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Human taste buds detect five primary tastes — sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami — each transduced by a receptor mechanism matched to the tastant's chemistry.
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A salty tastant's sodium ions directly excite taste neurons, while sweet and bitter tastants trigger a G-protein-coupled receptor.
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Umami, the savory taste of glutamate, was not widely accepted as a primary taste until decades after its discovery.