Taste of Danger

A mouthful of delicious food is a true joy, but our mouths are actually quite full even when we’re not eating. Countless microbes bustle around inside, and a new study suggests that our taste cells play a role in keeping watch of these outside elements. Researchers examined gene activity in taste cells and found a very similar pattern to that of microfold cells, immune cells which carry out surveillance in the tonsils and intestine. Adding a factor that boosts microfold cell growth to mouse taste cells made them act even more alike. Mouse papillae (the little bumps on the tongue, pictured with immune cells in red and taste cells in green) developed fewer immune cells when a particular gene linked to microfold growth was silenced. Cells’ response to flavours was affected too, suggesting taste cells behave as immune cells and may influence taste in response to oral microbe activity or infection.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Yumei Qin and colleagues
• Monell Chemical Senses Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Biology, January 2023