Nutrigenomics reveals potential genetic underpinning of diverse taste preference of Chinese men

Taste preference varies geographically in China. However, studies on Chinese people's taste preference in different regions of China are limited, and are lack of research on the mechanism of differences in taste preference, especially in genetics.

This study aims to investigate the characteristics of taste preference of Chinese men, and estimate whether diverse taste preference in Chinese have genetic underpinning.

We conducted a questionnaire survey on taste preferences on 1076 males from 10 regions of China, and collected another 1427 males from the same regions which genotyped by microarray. We compared the correlation between different taste preference, and evaluated the correlation between the mutation frequency of inhouse database and different taste preference. The putative taste-preference-related genes were further utilized to estimate the candidate relationship on gene and gene network in different taste preference.

There was a correlation between different taste preferences in Chinese men. We found 31 SNPs associated with 6 kind of taste preferences. These SNPs located within or nearby 36 genes, and the tastes associated with 4 of these genes (TRPV1, AGT, ASIC2 and GLP1R) are consistent with the previous studies. Moreover, in different tastes which were suggested to be associated with each other, some putative related genes were the same or in the same gene network, such as pathways related with blood pressure, response to stimulus and nervous system.

This study indicates that the diverse taste preference of Chinese men may have genetic underpinning.