Taste Receptors Discovered In Pancreatic Beta Cells Can Sense Fructose And Stimulate Insulin Secretion

They're everywhere! They're everywhere!

Taste receptors on the tongue help us distinguish between safe food and food that's spoiled or toxic. But taste receptors are now being found in other organs, too. In a study published online the week of February 6 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) discovered that beta cells in the pancreas use taste receptors to sense fructose, a type of sugar. According to the study, the beta cells respond to fructose by secreting insulin, a hormone that regulates the body's response to dietary sugar...

Using human and mouse pancreatic cells, Tyrberg, along with postdoctoral researchers George Kyriazis, Ph.D. and Mangala Soundarapandian, Ph.D., found that fructose activates sweet taste receptors on beta cells. Together with glucose, fructose helps amplify insulin release. To substantiate this observation, the team took a look at cells genetically engineered to lack the taste receptor gene. Without the gene, fructose did not stimulate insulin release, underscoring the role beta cell taste receptors play in insulin signaling.

Taste buds?

Really?

How about chemical receptors.

Yellow medical research.

Crap.