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Isolation of chicken taste buds for real‐time Ca 2 + imaging
Author(s) -
Kudo Kenichi,
Kawabata Fuminori,
Nomura Toumi,
Aridome Ayumi,
Nishimura Shotaro,
Tabata Shoji
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
animal science journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.606
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1740-0929
pISSN - 1344-3941
DOI - 10.1111/asj.12222
Subject(s) - taste , umami , taste bud , chemistry , taste receptor , microbiology and biotechnology , biochemistry , biology
We isolated chicken taste buds and used a real‐time Ca 2 + imaging technique to investigate the functions of the taste cells. With RT‐PCR , we found that isolated chicken taste bud‐like cell subsets express chicken gustducin messenger RNA . Immunocytochemical techniques revealed that the cell subsets were also immunopositive for chicken gustducin. These results provided strong evidence that the isolated cell subsets contain chicken taste buds. The isolated cell subsets were spindle‐shaped and approximately 61–75 μm wide and 88–98 μm long, and these characteristics are similar to those of sectional chicken taste buds. Using Ca 2 + imaging, we observed the buds' response to 2 mmol/L quinine hydrochloride (a bitter substance) and their response to a mixture of 25 mmol/L L ‐glutamic acid monopotassium salt monohydrate and 1 mmol/L inosine 5′‐monophosphate disodium salt, umami substances. The present study is the first morphological demonstration of isolated chicken taste buds, and our results indicate that the isolated taste buds were intact and functional approaches for examining the taste senses of the chicken using Ca 2 + imaging can be informative.