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Chemists Cooking Up Mysterious "Fifth Taste"

For anyone who's ever wanted the savory taste of meats and cheeses without actually having to eat them, chemists have identified molecular mechanisms underlying the sensation of umami, also known as the fifth taste.

The historically unappreciated taste is produced by two interacting sets of molecules, each of which is needed to trigger cellular receptors on your tongue's surface.

"This opens the door to designing better, more potent and more selective umami enhancers," said Xiaodong Li, a chemist at San Diego-based food-additive company Senomyx.

Four other basic tastes — bitter, sweet, salty and sour — were identified 2,400 years ago by the Greek philosopher Democritus, and became central to the western gastronomic canon.

In the late 19th century, French chef and veal-stock inventor Auguste Escoffier suggested that a fifth taste was responsible for his mouth-watering brew. Though Escoffier's dishes were popular, his theories were dismissed until 1908, when Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda showed that an amino acid called glutamate underlies the taste of a hearty variety of seaweed soup.

In honor of Ikeda, the taste was dubbed umami, the Japanese word for delicious. It took another 80 years for umami to be recognized by science as comparable to the other four tastes.

In the meantime, monosodium glutamate became wildly popular as a flavor enhancer. But MSG can cause headaches and dizziness, and has been tenuously linked to long-term neurological disorders.

"The only way to have a substitute is to find the molecular target of glutamate. If we figure that out, then we can screen for agents that are not glutamate but could mimic it," said Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist Solomon Snyder, who was not involved in the new study.

Li's team have taken human kidney cells and added the genes for receptors linked to umami taste. Receptors form on the cells' surface, geometrically resembling the mouth of a Venus flytrap. When glutamate is caught on a receptor's lips and a molecule called ribonucleotide lodged in its throat, the receptor snaps shut.

"The configuration of the receptor changes, sending a signal down into the cell," said Li. In their engineered and disconnected cells the signal quickly fizzled — but in a tongue surface cell, said Li, "Your brain gets a signal: Something tastes good that is in my mouth."

Magicology: Casting a Spell on the Mind

After years of ignoring magic, researchers are starting to realise that the methods magicians use to manipulate the human mind might hold important insights into how it works.

Magic is all about appearing to break the laws of nature - making solid objects appear or disappear, sawing human beings in half, reading people's minds, and so on.

The laws of nature, of course, are inviolable, which is why magicians target the human brain instead, packed as it is with glitches and weaknesses that can be exploited to create the illusion of doing the impossible. And they're brilliant at it: magic tricks only work if you fool all of the people all of the time.

Cognitive neuroscientists also have a long-standing interest in tricks of the mind, as these are a useful source of insight into how the brain works. Visual illusions, for example, have taught them a huge amount about how the brain processes visual information. Now they're dipping into the treasure chest of cognitive illusions provided by magic.

Over the past couple of years, neuroscientists and magicians have been getting together to create a science that might be called "magicology".

If successful, both sides stand to benefit. By plundering the magicians' book of tricks, researchers hope to develop powerful new tools for probing perception and cognition. And if they find any tricks they can't explain, that could lead to new knowledge about how the brain works.

Similarly, magicians hope that the collaboration will lead to new magic tricks by alerting them to perceptual or cognitive weaknesses that they didn't already know about. "The real proof that a science of magic has come of age will be when we can use science to build a better magic trick," says Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK.

Learn more about the fascinating tricks of the Magician's trade, such as misdirection, illusion and forcing, by clicking on the Source Link below.