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Updated: Jun 19, 2026

Taste Exam: A Brief and Validated Test
Published on: August 17, 2018
The taste of carbonation
Jayaram Chandrashekar1, David Yarmolinsky, Lars von Buchholtz
1Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Departments of Neurobiology and Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
None:
Carbonated beverages are commonly available and immensely popular, but little is known about the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the perception of carbonation in the mouth. In mammals, carbonation elicits both somatosensory and chemosensory responses, including activation of taste neurons. We have identified the cellular and molecular substrates for the taste of carbonation. By targeted genetic ablation and the silencing of synapses in defined populations of taste receptor cells, we demonstrated that the sour-sensing cells act as the taste sensors for carbonation, and showed that carbonic anhydrase 4, a glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored enzyme, functions as the principal CO2 taste sensor. Together, these studies reveal the basis of the taste of carbonation as well as the contribution of taste cells in the orosensory response to CO2.
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