Human cGAS Has a Slightly Different Taste for dsDNA

Human Gustation: When the Brain Has Taste

What we put into our mouths can nourish or kill us. A new study uses state-of-the-art electroencephalogram decoding to detail how we and our brains know what we taste.

He's ethical but has bad taste....

Different phenolic compounds activate distinct human bitter taste receptors.

Bitterness is a major sensory attribute of several common foods and beverages rich in polyphenol compounds. These compounds are reported as very important for health as chemopreventive compounds, but they are also known to taste bitter. In this work, the activation of the human bitter taste receptors, TAS2Rs, by six polyphenol compounds was analyzed. The compounds chosen are present in a wide r...

A Human Taste for Rarity Spells Disaster for Endangered Species

December 2006 | Volume 4 | Issue 12 | e418 Most governments around the world set conservation policy based on the assumption that resource exploitation and species protection can co-exist in the same place. These policies have led to Orwellian “marine protected areas” that host commercial fi shing operations, leading one to wonder who’s protecting whom. A new study reveals the danger of this ap...

Structure-Guided Reprogramming of Human cGAS Dinucleotide Linkage Specificity

Cyclic dinucleotides (CDNs) play central roles in bacterial pathogenesis and innate immunity. The mammalian enzyme cGAS synthesizes a unique cyclic dinucleotide (cGAMP) containing a 2'-5' phosphodiester linkage essential for optimal immune stimulation, but the molecular basis for linkage specificity is unknown. Here, we show that the Vibrio cholerae pathogenicity factor DncV is a prokaryotic cG...