ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Data Journal

Sweet taste chemoreception unveiled. The case of lactose and sucrose.

Abstract: In the late 1960s, a molecular theory of sweet taste was proposed, based on the presence of a ?functional structure? in all sweeteners, eliciting the sweet response via the interaction with a complementary tripartite site in the taste bud receptor. Remarkably, the role of water as a likely mediator, through hydrogen bonding, between the sugar and the receptor has been almost totally neglected. Looking at the hydration shells of carbohydrates like cellobiose (tasteless), glucose (sweet), and trehalose (moderately sweet), we have observed that water molecules are H-bonded to specific sites of cellobiose and glucose, while almost no H-bonding has been observed between water and trehalose. We wish to look at the hydration shells of two sugars, lactose and sucrose, to seek for an explanation, at the atomic length scale, of the sweet taste chemoreception.

Principal Investigator: Professor Fabio Bruni
Local Contact: Dr Silvia Imberti
Experimenter: Dr Sylvia McLain
Experimenter: Professor Maria Antonietta Ricci
Experimenter: Dr Luis Carlos Pardo-Soto
Experimenter: Dr Laura Maugeri
Experimenter: Dr Natasha Rhys

DOI: 10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1520061

ISIS Experiment Number: RB1520061

Publisher: STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Data format: RAW/Nexus
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Data Citation

The recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is as:
[author], [date], [title], [publisher], [doi]

For Example:
Professor Fabio Bruni et al; (2016): Sweet taste chemoreception unveiled. The case of lactose and sucrose., STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1520061

Data is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license.