Korean researchers have built an ultrasensitive bioelectronic tongue that gauges sweetness more objectively, possibly paving ways for food and beverage companies to create products that are agreeable for more consumers.
Tongue
Almost everyone loves to have a sweet treat, at least now and then. But it has been observed that the opinion of sweetness can vary between individuals. What one person considers to be just sweet may turn out to be too sweet for another.
These differences in the assessment of sweetness make it more tasking for companies to make almost perfect foods and beverages. As a result, there has been a search to come up with a method that appraises sweetness more objectively.
Now, scientists have developed a bioelectronic tongue that could enable a more accurate assessment of sweetness. This invention assesses sugariness in a manner similar to how human taste buds do it.
The ultrasensitive tongue was reported in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
This novel device is not a tongue in terms of appearance. It is more in terms of its ability to “taste.”
The tongue
The human tongue is the main organ for assessing the taste of substances. It has sweet taste receptors featuring two sizeable, intricate structures that bind to sugars and other compounds.
The Venus flytrap domain is one of these two sweetness-sensitive areas of the tongue. It is so-called because of its resemblance to the folding leaves of the plant it is named after. This outer area interacts with most sugars and sweet substances that a person eats.
Researchers in this study, headed by Tai Hyun Park and Seunghun Hong, had created an umami sensor capable of human-like performance in earlier research. They were able to pull this off using only the protein found at the umami taste receptor’s end. A similar concept was put to use in this latest study.
The team set about creating a bioelectronic tongue with the Venus flytrap domain serving as electronic taste buds. It produced copies of the sweetness-sensitive area of the tongue with the aid of bacteria. These Venus flytrap domain copies were then put in a thin layer on gold electrodes.
Multiple gold electrodes were then joined together by the researchers using carbon nanotubes. This resulted in a field-effect transistor.
Ability to discern sweetness
The Korean scientists proceeded to examine the ability of the bioelectronic tongue to measure sweetness. They observed that the current running through the device reduced when solutions that contained natural sucrose or the artificial sweetener saccharin were applied to it. The greater the sweetness of the solution, the greater the fall in current.
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According to the research team, the bioelectronic tongue responded to the solutions down to 0.1 femtomolar. This, they said, represented up to 10 million times higher sensitivity than similar devices that had been developed before now.
The sensor could assess the sweetness of regular drinks, including apple juice and chamomile tea sweetened with sucrose, consistently. It did not respond when exposed to either the tasteless sugar cellobiose or the salt monosodium glutamate.
The researchers noted that the sensitivity and selectivity of this device could make it quite useful to food and beverage companies. It may also serve useful purposes in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.
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