how do we taste?

How do we taste? Taste is one of the five senses; Sight, Hearing, Touch, Smell, and taste. Taste is really important because it can actually stop us from dying. It is said that bitter, one of the tastes, would detect if something was poisonous or not. if a plant was poisonous, there would be a bitter taste. So you can thank taste for that. The sense, taste, also known as gustation, is a chemosensation. Chemosensation meaning, a fundamental sensory function. If you poke out your tongue, There will be little bumps on your tongue called papillae. The papillae is covered in lots and lots of taste buds. Taste buds are the reason you can taste. Different taste buds, on a different part of the tongue have different taste receptors. Type one is sweet, and type 2 is bitter. Currently, there are five different tastes; Sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. Umami meaning, A japanese word meaning savoury. We taste sweetness because of carbohydrates, like sugar. It is detected with G-protein coupled receptors on your taste receptor cells from taste receptor one protein family. When a sweet molecule binds to the taste receptor cell, it triggers a change in the protein that sets off a chain reaction. The cell will let calcium in to trigger a reaction in the brain later on. We taste salty from sodium ions. The sodium ions directly enter the receptor cell via sodium channels, causing the cells to depolarise and send a signal. Bitter is the flavour in the main components of coffee, dark chocolate and broccoli. Bitterness relies on G-protein coupled receptors from the taste receptor 2. There have been 550 bitter compounds identified by scientists.