Basic research has revealed that the chemical sensory world of children is different from that of adults, as evidenced by their heightened preferences for sweet and salty tastes. However, little is known about the ontogeny of sour taste preferences, despite the growing market of extreme sour candies. The present study investigated whether the level of sourness most preferred in a food matrix an...

MANY people see meditation as an exotic form of daydreaming, or a quick fix for a stressed-out mind. My advice to them is, try it. It's difficult, at least to begin with. On my first attempt, instead of concentrating on my breathing and letting go of anything that came to mind as instructed by my cheery Tibetan teacher, I got distracted by a string of troubled thoughts and then fell asleep. App...

BACKGROUND The polycystic kidney disease-like ion channel PKD2L1 and its associated partner PKD1L3 are potential candidates for sour taste receptors. PKD2L1 is expressed in type III taste cells that respond to sour stimuli and genetic elimination of cells expressing PKD2L1 substantially reduces chorda tympani nerve responses to sour taste stimuli. However, the contribution of PKD2L1 and PKD1L3 ...

Sour taste is detected by taste receptor cells that respond to acids through yet poorly understood mechanisms. The cells that detect sour express the protein PKD2L1, which is not the sour receptor but nonetheless serves as a useful marker for sour cells. By use of mice in which the PKD2L1 promoter drives expression of yellow fluorescent protein, we previously reported that sour taste cells from...

The present study examined whether infants show an acceptance for extreme sour tastes and whether acceptance of sour taste is related to infants' fruit intake. Fruit intake of fifty-three infants at 6, 12 and 18 months was assessed using 3 d food records. Sour acceptance of these infants was studied at 18.1 (SD 1.5) months. Acceptance for four solutions differing in citric acid concentrations (...

Taste cells in taste buds of the mammalian tongue and oral cavity can detect five basic modalities: sweet, bitter, umami, salty, and sour. Each taste cell expresses distinct molecular sensors, such as G protein-coupled receptors or ion channels, which detect tastants (i.e., chemical stimuli that elicit taste sensation) and initiate an intracellular response that culminates in membrane depolariz...

It has been postulated for decades that ion channels serve as receptors for most sour tasting stimuli. Though many candidates exist, definitive evidence linking any particular channel to sour taste perception has been elusive. Several studies have suggested that two members of the polycystic kidney disease-like family may function as components of an ionotropic taste receptor mediating the tran...

Morphological studies showed that tree shape in Bitter sweet orange and Yuma citrange was spheroid with spreading growth habit and wide branch angle. Leaves were simple with dark green color, medium size and brevipetiolate in Sour orange while Yuma citrange had trifoliate leaves with medium and green color. Bitter sweet orange had the highest leaf lamina length (10.4 mm) than other rootstocks. ...

Sour skin is a common bacterial disease that can affect most onion varieties all over the world (Burkholder 1950; Sotokawa and Takikawa 2004). Because sour skin bacteria have an uncanny ability to survive in moist environments, it is one of the major threats to the sweet onion industry with up to 50% losses in some fields or storage rooms (Howard F. Schwartz 2008). Sour skin bacteria can enter ...

Sour taste has been considered the simplest of the basic tastes because it is elicited only by hydrogen ions. However, there is not a sufficiently clear understanding of that relationship to allow sour taste intensity to be predicted and rationally modified in foods. On the basis of analysis of sensory data from our laboratory and reanalysis of previously published data, we propose a new hypoth...