ENJOYING a glass of bubbly may actually depend on our taste cells, rather than the bursting of bubbles on the tongue, scientists revealed today.
A team headed by Charles Zuker, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, found that a class of taste-receptor cells in the tongue respond to carbon dioxide, the gas that gives drinks their fizz, and identified an enzyme called carbonic anhydrase 4 in CO² perception.
The work showed for the first time that the tongue’s fizz-sensing cells are the same ones that detect sourness.
