YOU might be able to blame your sweet tooth on your genes, according to
researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
No one had been able to pin down the receptor proteins that allow us to taste
sweet things. But Robert Margolskee and his colleagues knew that the gene which
codes for those proteins was probably lurking at the end of chromosome 4. So
they went hunting in that region of the mouse genome for proteins similar to
those already known to detect tastes like bitterness and umami, a flavour often
found in Japanese cooking. They…
