Requirement for an Otopetrin-like protein for acid taste in <i>Drosophila</i>
Anindya Ganguly, Avinash Chandel, Heather N. Turner, Shan Wang, Emily R. Liman, Craig Montell
Abstract
Significance The taste of acids is critical for animal survival since it enables them to differentiate potentially dangerous from nutritious foods. Due to the general requirement for acid taste for survival, we tested the idea that the receptor mechanism functioning in acid taste may be evolutionarily conserved. Here, we demonstrate that mutation of a Drosophila gene, Otopetrin-Like A ( OtopLA ), encoding a protein distantly related to the recently identified mammalian acid taste receptor, OTOP1, is essential for both the strong repulsion to highly acidic food and mild attraction to low acidity. The mild attraction and strong aversion to acids requires expression of OtopLA in distinct taste neurons in the fly equivalent of the vertebrate tongue.