Although it has been long accepted that innervation by a taste nerve is essential for maintenance of taste buds, it is not clear what role, if any, innervation plays in the morphogenesis of taste papillae and taste bud development. The following study was undertaken to determine what effects lack of sensory innervation have on the development of taste papillae and the formation of taste buds in...

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and Neurotrophin 3 (NT-3) are members of the neurotrophin family and are expressed in the developing and adult tongue papillae. BDNF null-mutated mice exhibit specific impairments related to innervation and development of the gustatory system while NT-3 null mice have deficits in their lingual somatosensory innervation. To further evaluate the functional...

The qualitative and quantitative changes occurring in the taste buds of the fungiform papillae of male Sprague-Dawley rats (aged 51-125 days old) after x-ray irradiation were studied. A single dose of 2000 Roentgen (R) was delivered and observations were made at 0, 3, 7, 14, 21 and 30 days after x-ray irradiation. The changes in taste bud morphology were interpreted first as degenerative and th...

BACKGROUND The perception of sour taste in humans is incompletely understood at the receptor cell level. We report here on two patients with an acquired sour ageusia. Each patient was unresponsive to sour stimuli, but both showed normal responses to bitter, sweet, and salty stimuli. METHODS AND FINDINGS Lingual fungiform papillae, containing taste cells, were obtained by biopsy from the two p...

Using light and scanning electron microscopy, the morphological adaptations of the yak (Bos grunniens) tongue to its foraging environment in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau were studied. The tongue of the yak was compared with that of cattle (Bos taurus). Compared with cattle, yak tongues are on average 4 cm shorter (P < 0.001), and yak consume forages using the labia oris, rather than by extending...

Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is a malignant tumor that may arise in skin damaged by sunlight and ionizing radiation in burn or vaccination scars. Clinical variants of BCC include nodular, morphea type, superficial and polypoid. Tattoo reactions are histologically diverse and can be classified in three main classes: 1) Allergic, granulomatous, and Lichenoid reactions; 2) Inoculation and infe...

An amiloride-insensitive (AI) salt taste receptor is the predominant transducer of Na+ taste in some mammalian species. Accordingly, the objective of this study was to characterize the AI-salt taste receptor. The AI-salt taste receptor in rat and mouse fungiform taste receptor cells (TRCs) was activated by the vanilloid receptor-1 (VR-1) agonists, resiniferatoxin (RTX), capsiacin (CAP) and elev...

OAKLEY, B. Taste preference following cross-innervation of rat fungiform taste buds. PHYSIOL. BEHAV. 4 (6) 929--933, 1969.-It has been previously demonstrated that cross-innervation of rat taste buds alters some features of the taste input signal to the brain. In the present study the behavioral consequences of these alterations were assessed in a choice situation in which both water and taste ...