Taste, Taste Receptors and Role of GLP-1 Signaling in Taste Perception

Balanced diet and proper healthy nutrition, avoidance of consuming high calorie or junk food or ingesting toxic substances that are harmful to the body and maintenance of physiological energy homeostasis are very crucial for all living organisms including human beings. After every food ingestion brain gets sensory signal from gustatory receptors and segregates and evaluates the stimuli based on the individual taste, leading to the personalized experience very commonly known as flavor. There are five very well-known taste qualities such as sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami. The production of physiologically important incretin hormone Glucagon like peptide-1 (GLP-1) in the taste perception cells and the presence of its known receptor GLP-1R on adjacent taste nerve fibers evidently suggest that GLP-1 signaling is associated with the function of taste. In this brief review, we will provide a bird eye view on the recent advance in taste, taste receptors and GLP-1 signaling and we will discuss their pivotal role in overall taste perception and signaling.