Abstract
Several studies have used taste sensitivity to 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) to evaluate interindividual taste variability and its impact on food preferences, nutrition, and health. We used a supervised learning (SL) approach for the automatic identification of the PROP taster categories (super taster (ST); medium taster (MT); and non-taster (NT)) of 84 subjects (aged 18–40 years). Biological features determined from subjects were included for the training system. Results showed that SL enables the automatic identification of objective PROP taster status, with high precision (97%). The biological features were classified in order of importance in facilitating learning and as prediction factors. The ratings of perceived taste intensity for PROP paper disks (50 mM) and PROP solution (3.2 mM), along with fungiform papilla density, were the most important features, and high estimated values pushed toward ST prediction, while low values leaned toward NT prediction. Furthermore, TAS2R38 genotypes were significant features (AVI/AVI, PAV/PAV, and PAV/AVI to classify NTs, STs, and MTs, respectively). These results, in showing that the SL approach enables an automatic, immediate, scalable, and high-precision classification of PROP taster status, suggest that it may represent an objective and reliable tool in taste physiology studies, with applications ranging from basic science and medicine to food sciences.
Highlights
Taste is the sensory modality that enables organisms to distinguish nutrient-rich food from harmful substances [1,2]; it recognizes five basic sensory qualities: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami
One-way ANOVA showed that the density of fungiform papillae varies with PROP taster status (F[2,81] = 6.802; p = 0.0019)
No differences related to PROP taster status in terms of age, body mass index (BMI), gender, smoking status, genotype distribution of gustin locus, or taste scores were found (p > 0.05)
Summary
Taste is the sensory modality that enables organisms to distinguish nutrient-rich food from harmful substances [1,2]; it recognizes five basic sensory qualities: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. Several studies have consistently reported that STs have a higher density of fungiform taste papillae [6,16,17,18] or a greater functional activity [15] compared to the other PROP taster groups These morphological features of STs can explain why these individuals are more responsive to a wide range of oral stimuli that are not mediated via the TAS2R38 bitter receptor [9,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32]. Several studies have reported gender differences in PROP perception, showing that women were more sensitive to PROP than men [6,42,43], and had more taste buds and fungiform papillae [6,44]; other studies do not substantiate these differences [15,45,46]
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