Taste perception - Docking of tastants in receptors
3 important questions on Taste perception - Docking of tastants in receptors
Why are docking studies done?
- To visualise and understand the interaction of the tastant with the (various amino acids in the) receptor protein
- Can be used to predict, in silico, the taste activity of compounds that have not been measured with a cell-based assay or sensory panel.
What is needed for docking studies, and why is this a problem?
- It is important to have 3D-structure of the receptor protein available.
- This is often a problem, as the receptors are membrane proteins, which are difficult to crystallize.
What is mGluR (metabotropic glutamate receptor)?
- It is used as a template for modelling sweet/umami receptors (T1Rs)
- It is the only receptor which has been crystallized
- It is actually not a taste receptor, but it bears strong homology in amino acid sequence to the taste receptors, and consequently the structural similarities of this receptor with true taste receptors is though to be high.
- As the crystal structure is known, mGluR are used to model the fit of tastants into the receptor and to predict the taste activity of molecules towards T1R in general.
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