Biology / Unit 12 Bio 2887 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Taste: Five Primary Tastants
Captions available
The idea
Human taste buds detect five primary tastes — sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami — each transduced by a receptor mechanism matched to the tastant's chemistry.
In practice
A salty tastant's sodium ions directly excite taste neurons, while sweet and bitter tastants trigger a G-protein-coupled receptor.
Where people slip
Umami, the savory taste of glutamate, was not widely accepted as a primary taste until decades after its discovery.
Your place on the trail
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