
New type of taste cell discovered in taste buds - edward
https://neurosciencenews.com/taste-cells-16830/
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sradman
From the Discussion in the paper _A subset of broadly responsive Type III
taste cells contribute to the detection of bitter, sweet and umami stimuli_
[1]:

> Our data suggest that BR cells are a subset of Type III cells that are
> capable of responding to multiple taste stimuli, except sodium chloride.
> Since the BR cells always responded to sour, 100% of these cells responded
> to multiple taste qualities and approximately 80% of these cells responded
> to either three or four modalities (Fig 3D). This is in contrast to Type II
> cells that are usually narrowly tuned to a single taste quality.

It appears that broadly responsive (BR) cells make the taste response slightly
more complicated than original thought. Salty seems to be the odd man out and
conforms to the original model; I'm not sure which observation I find more
intriguing.

[1]
[https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/jo...](https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1008925)

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seesawtron
Primarily, one should note that these cells were identified in mice where they
found a subset of cells that potentially respond to multiple taste stimuli
including bitter, sweet, sour, and umami.

There are already existing classes of cells that respond to bitter, sweet, and
umami taste and those that respond to sour and salty stimuli. The cells
identified here (BR- Broadly Responsive cells) respond to bitter, sweet, sour,
and umami. But if you look at Fig. 3D, even within these BR cells, there is
separation between cells that uniquely respond to specific tastes so it is not
clear to me how they are all classified into "Broadly Responsive".

