RESEARCH ARTICLE Characterization of the Sweet Taste Receptor Tas1r2 from an Old World Monkey Species Rhesus Monkey and Species-Dependent Activation of the Monomeric Receptor by an Intense Sweetener Perillartine Chenggu Cai1, Hua Jiang2, Lei Li1, Tianming Liu1, Xuejie Song1,BoLiu2,3* a11111 1 Department of Bioengineering, Qilu University of Technology, Jinan, Shandong, 250353, P.R. China, 2 Department of Food Science and Engineering, Qilu University of Technology, Jinan, Shandong, 250353, P.R. China, 3 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, 250012, P.R. China *
[email protected] OPEN ACCESS Abstract Citation: Cai C, Jiang H, Li L, Liu T, Song X, Liu B (2016) Characterization of the Sweet Taste Receptor Sweet state is a basic physiological sensation of humans and other mammals which is Tas1r2 from an Old World Monkey Species Rhesus mediated by the broadly acting sweet taste receptor-the heterodimer of Tas1r2 (taste recep- Monkey and Species-Dependent Activation of the tor type 1 member 2) and Tas1r3 (taste receptor type 1 member 3). Various sweeteners Monomeric Receptor by an Intense Sweetener interact with either Tas1r2 or Tas1r3 and then activate the receptor. In this study, we cloned, Perillartine. PLoS ONE 11(8): e0160079. doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0160079 expressed and functionally characterized the taste receptor Tas1r2 from a species of Old World monkeys, the rhesus monkey. Paired with the human TAS1R3, it was shown that the Editor: Maik Behrens, Universitat Potsdam, GERMANY rhesus monkey Tas1r2 could respond to natural sugars, amino acids and their derivates. Furthermore, similar to human TAS1R2, rhesus monkey Tas1r2 could respond to artificial Received: April 9, 2016 sweeteners and sweet-tasting proteins.