ArticleChemical senses2025
Structural comparisons of human and mouse fungiform taste buds.
Article in Chemical senses, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Neuropeptide Y and peptide YY differentially modulate bitter- and fatty acid-evoked responses in human fungiform taste bud cells.American journal of physiology. Cell physiology · 2026Article
- L-proline supplementation affects non-volatile flavour perception through oral microbiome metabolic pathways.NPJ science of food · 2025Article
- Taste dysfunction in Long COVID.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
- Update of
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Taste buds are commonly studied in rodent models, but some differences exist between mice and humans in terms of gustatory mechanisms and sensitivities. Whether these functional differences are reflected in structural differences between species is unclear. Using immunofluorescent image stacks, we compared the morphological and molecular characteristics of mouse and human fungiform taste buds. The results suggest that while the general features of fungiform taste buds are similar between mice and humans, several characteristics differ significantly. Human taste buds are larger and taller than those of mice, yet they contain similar numbers of taste cells. Taste buds in humans are more heavily innervated by gustatory nerve fibers expressing the purinergic receptor P2X3 showing a 40% higher innervation density than in mice. Like type II cells of mice, a subset (about 30%) of cells in human taste buds is immunoreactive for phospholipase C beta (PLCβ2). These PLCβ2-immunoreactive cells display calcium homeostasis modulator 1 (CALHM1)-immunoreactive puncta closely opposed to gustatory nerve fibers suggestive of channel-type synapses in type II cells in mice. These puncta, used as a measure of synaptic contact, are significantly larger in humans compared to mice suggesting a higher efflux of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) neurotransmitter in humans. Altogether these findings suggest that while many similarities exist in the organization of murine and human fungiform taste buds, significant differences do exist in taste bud size, innervation density, and size of synaptic contacts that may impact gustatory signal transmission.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.