Taste properties are crucial for human survival, nutrition, and well-being. The challenge of unpleasant tastes, like bitterness and astringency, is gaining attention across various research fields, including food science, nutrition, taste disorders, and drug discovery. BeTASTy transcends food-focused studies to tackle key challenges in astringency and bitterness. This project explores the physical-chemical mechanisms behind their perception, focusing on salivary proteins, epithelia, and mechanoreceptors. It will also reveal how some compounds trigger both sensations using an innovative model. A pioneering approach with human organoids and EEG will uncover individual sensory differences. Ultimately, BeTASTy aims to develop cutting-edge cell-free biosensors for assessing bitterness and astringency, overcoming the limitations of current methods in academia and industry.

By integrating food chemistry, neuroscience, and biotechnology, this groundbreaking project seeks to advance the biochemical-neural-perceptual understanding of taste.