Expression of alpha-transducin, a chemoreceptive molecule, in endocrine and non-endocrine cells of the pig gastrointestinal tract

摘要

Several neural and humoral mechanisms are known to control gut functions before, during and after food ingestion and digestion. Different specialized epithelial cells, i.e. cells that form gustatory buttons distributed throughout the oral cavity, tongue, pharynx, and epiglottis are involved in taste perception. Gustatory cells are able to discriminate different gustatory stimuli: bitter, sweet, salty and sour. Monosodium glutamate and disodium guanylate represent another type of stimulus referred to as umami. Each of these stimuli can be transduced with different modalities, in such a way that gustatory substances can act on peculiar ionic channels (i.e. salty and sour) or via G-protein coupled taste receptors (TR), i.e. TR1 and TR2 (for sweet and bitter, respectively).