Tricking Your Taste Buds

I recently came across a really interesting, and fortunately for us all natural, fruit with some very cool chemistry. The fruit is a small berry from west Africa, aptly named the miracle berry, and it contains a protein that can trick your taste buds into interpreting any sour taste into a sweet one for about an hour or so. This naturally has a lot of applications. The berries are being used as a sweetener for diabetics, for tasting parties where people eat lemons and drink vinegar (to name a few of menu items) and enjoy every bit of it, for some very new and interesting cocktails, and to remove the metallic taste associated with chemo treatment. It really has a wide range of uses given its impressive effects. So how does it actually work? The sweetening effect of the berries has been traced to a single protein miraculin, that binds with taste receptors on your tongue and then reacts with acids in the sour foods to make them set off your sweet receptors instead. While the structure and genetic code of the protein is known, and even spliced into lettuce, the method of action for the interaction between the taste receptors and the chemicals is still unclear, though it has been suggested that the protein is able to temporarily modify the structure of your sweet receptors to make them far more sensitive towards acids, typically sour compounds. So far the berries have been found to have no negative effects, though thorough testing hasn't been done. The miracle berries are easily available and are grown here in the US, so go and enjoy a sweet lemon.



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/dining/28flavor.html?_r=1
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/12/72251
http://www.jbc.org.proxy.library.emory.edu/cgi/reprint/263/23/11536
http://www.miraclefruitman.com/