cDNA microarray screening for taste-bud-specific genes.

Information about taste signaling molecules is still insufficient to understand the mechanisms of taste signal transductions, while novel taste receptors have been found recently. There are two strategies to discover novel taste signaling related genes; one strategy is homology based cloning and another strategy is global gene screening. Homology based cloning has been mainly used to find out the taste related genes, but we cannot expect the discovery of unexpected genes with critical roles in this strategy. Global gene screening can lead to the discovery of unexpected expressed genes. At present, new techniques for global gene screening are developed, for example, differential display-PCR, SAGE (serial analysis of gene expression), DNA array technology and so on. We tried here gene screening by DNA array technology to find taste-bud-specific genes, then predicted their function using gene expression pattern and genetic information.