New flavors

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The below may be of interest for our food flavor.

Business

Nature 435, 559 (2 June 2005) | doi: 10.1038/435559a

More flavour up front

Emma Marris

Two young biotechnology start-ups in the United States are leading an innovative

search for powerful flavour enhancers. If they succeed, biologists at the

companies

say, they could revolutionize food manufacture by dramatically shrinking the

amounts

of sugar, salt and other flavourings used by the industry.

Senomyx of La Jolla, California, and New Jersey-based Linguagen are using

high-throughput techniques pioneered by the drug industry to scan thousands of

compounds for their impact on human taste receptors. These poke out of tongue

cells

and bind to food molecules, allowing us to taste salt, sweet, bitter, sour and

umami, the flavour of monosodium glutamate.

Armed with bulk screening and genetic-sequence information for the receptors and

their associated pathways, the companies are trying to pinpoint and refine the

natural and synthetic compounds that can do the job.

" The way an enhancer works is that it makes the taste receptor more efficient, "

says

Mark Zoller, head of research at Senomyx, the larger of the two companies, which

raised $34 million in an initial public offering on NASDAQ last June. Originally

called Ambryx, Senomyx was founded in 1998 by Zuker, a molecular

geneticist

at the University of California, San Diego, who had discovered and described

some of

the taste receptors.

Linguagen founder Margolskee, a biophysicist at the Mount Sinai School of

Medicine in New York, set up his company after describing some of the other

steps in

the molecular pathway between food hitting the tongue and the brain recognizing

a

taste. Both companies really took off after the Human Genome Project made it

much

easier to identify the genes behind taste and express them in cells for

screening.

In a typical screening process, active genes for the receptor or pathway element

are

inserted into mammalian cells, and the resulting transgenic cells are grown in

384-well plates. A slightly different compound is added to each well from a

small-molecule library. If the compound binds or flirts with binding with the

receptor, the activity will make the dye in the well light up. That compound

will

then be plucked out and its exact effect on the taste process investigated.

Because these compounds target the receptor so well, they are effective in tiny

quantities — small enough to qualify for an expedited safety approval process,

which

should take three years or less.

BANANASTOCK/ALAMY

Sweet and sour: flavour enhancers would allow the food industry to cut back on

sugar

and salt.

Senomyx, whose stock has doubled in value since last year's flotation, plans to

make

its money by licensing the intellectual-property rights to food companies. It

already has research agreements with a brace of food giants, including Nestlé

and

Coca-Cola.

The two start-ups hold patents on the specific screening processes, as well as

compounds they have identified as promising — advantages that could aid their

survival. Investors are betting that Senomyx, at least, will turn a profit one

of

these days. " If things continue to go well, there is the chance that this could

become a very big company, " says Weber, a stock analyst at First Albany in

New

York state.

Senomyx is also sitting on intellectual property relating to the olfactory

receptors. Although it hasn't started an active research programme with the

nose's

machinery for recognizing smells, it is thinking about it.

Clint , head of research at New York-based International Flavor and

Fragrance,

points out that this is a key consideration: the five fundamental tastes are

just

the base notes to flavours, which also involve many of the 300 or so olfactory

receptors. He adds that while companies such as Linguagen are discovering novel,

exciting molecules, these must be incorporated into the overall flavours of

foods

through the " art and science " of an experienced flavourist.

Al Pater, PhD; email: old542000@...

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