BACKGROUND Natural foods contain not only nutrients, but also nonnutritious and potentially harmful chemicals. Thus, animals need to evaluate food content in order to make adequate feeding decisions. RESULTS Here, we investigate the effects of acids on the taste neuron responses and on taste behavior of desirable, nutritious sugars and sugar/bitter compound mixtures in Drosophila melanogaster...

Molecular data suggest that receptors for all bitter ligands are coexpressed in the same taste receptor cells (TRCs) while physiological results indicate that individual TRCs respond only to a subset of bitter stimuli. It is also unclear to what extent bitter-responsive neurons are stimulated by non-bitter stimuli. To explore these issues, single neuron responses were recorded from the rat nucl...

effect of different planting ratios of oat (avena sativa l.) and vetch (vicia sativa l.) was assessed on quality and quantity of forage and silage in an intercropping system as completely randomized block design (rcbd) with four replications. the treatments were different planting ratios of oat and vetch including 0:100, 20:80, 40:60, 50:50, 60:40, 80:20 and 100:0 (oat-vetch) formed as replacem...

Most animals possess taste receptors neurons detecting potentially noxious compounds. In humans, the ligands which activate these neurons define a sensory space called "bitter". By extension, this term has been used in animals and insects to define molecules which induce aversive responses. In this review, based on our observations carried out in Drosophila, we examine how bitter compounds are ...

Two-bottle preference tests were done to determine whether pigs detect bitter-tasting compounds. Four standard bitter compounds and nine bitter-tasting pharmaceutical compounds were tested. Pigs detect and avoid taste compounds that humans perceive as bitter-tasting. A dose-response to varying concentrations of bitter tastants can be measured.

Animals can discriminate among many different types of foods. This discrimination process involves multiple sensory systems, but the sense of taste is known to play a central role. We asked how the taste system contributes to the discrimination of different "bitter" taste stimuli in Manduca sexta caterpillars. This insect has approximately eight bilateral pairs of taste cells that respond selec...

Common vetch (Vicia sativa subsp. sativa L.) is a self-pollinating annual forage legume with worldwide importance. Here, we investigate the optimal number of individuals that may represent the genetic diversity of a single population, using Start Codon Targeted (SCoT) markers. Two cultivated varieties and two wild accessions were evaluated using five SCoT primers, also testing different samplin...

Crude protein (CP) of forages can be separated into fractions of differentiated abilities to provide available amino acids in the lower gut of ruminants. This knowledge is critical to develop feeding systems and to predict animal responses. We have measured during two growing seasons (1996 to 1997 and 1997 to 1998) the CP fractions of common vetch fresh forage with the objective being to assess...