You enjoy the rich cocoa flavour of your favourite chocolate. Or the sweet buttercream frosting on a vanilla cake. The taste lingers, then it fades.
Scientists don’t know how taste dissipates, but Prashen Chelikani [PhD/04] is currently working to find out.
The professor of oral biology at the Dr. Gerald Niznick College of Dentistry says that while many researchers are focused on the activation of taste buds, he wants to understand why and how the taste sensation is turned off.
“It’s important because it helps us understand the fundamentals of taste physiology,” says Chelikani, who is associate dean (research) at the UM dental college.
Chelikani is a leading expert on bitter taste receptors (T2Rs), which are proteins on our taste buds that sense the bitterness of substances like coffee, tea and red wine.
The only scientist studying T2Rs in Canada, Chelikani and his collaborators recently discovered that peptides derived from Manitoba-grown pea protein can block bitterness. He says pea protein could be added to medications or supplements to suppress bitterness, which would be a healthy alternative to adding sugar to make products more palatable.
His team’s research on this topic has appeared in peer-reviewed journals like iScience Food Chemistry and Future Foods, and has led UM to apply for multiple patents.
“Not all research can be applied to everyday consumer uses, but this work definitely has a lot of potential. There are quite a few companies interested, and we are negotiating with them to bring it to market,” says Chelikani, who was raised in Visakhapatnam, a city in southeast India.
Nobel laureate mentor
Chelikani earned his bachelor’s and master’s from Andhra University in India. He then completed his PhD in microbiology from UM’s Faculty of Science in 2004.
He spent four formative years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Har Gobind Khorana, a biochemist who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1968. When Khorana’s lab closed, Chelikani joined UM as a faculty member in 2007.
As well as studying taste, Chelikani’s research is focused on the oral microbiome, the community of microorganisms – including bacteria, viruses and fungi – that live in your mouth.
“The microbiome is a central player that is connected to bacterial gum infection, gum disease and cavities,” Chelikani says.
