The African Non-Spiny (ANS) clade contains 14 species of mostly large canopy lianas or scandent shrubs confined to Madagascar (10) and continental Africa (4, with with one species reaching the southern Arabian peninsula). Members of the clade were previously classified in sections Afrosolanum Bitter, Benderianum Bitter, Lemurisolanum Bitter, Macronesiotes Bitter and Quadrangulare Bitter, and we...

The black-rot fungus, Myeosphaerella melonis (Pass.) Chiu and J. C. Walker, was first reported in France in 1891 on leaves of a Chinese variety of cucumber {CueUQyiis sativus L.) (¡^i) .^ It was recorded the next year from Delaware on vines of watermelon {Gitrullus vulgaris Sehr ad.), squash {Cucúrbita spp.), pumpkin {Cucúrbita pepo L.), muskmelon {Cucumis meló L.), and cucumber {3). Grossenbac...

• Drinking a bitter beverage increases happy participants' inclination to save money. • Drinking a bitter beverage decreases unhappy participants' inclination to save money. • Priming bitterness-related concepts increases happy participants' inclination to save money. • Priming bitterness-related concepts decreases unhappy participants' inclination to save money. • Drinking a bitter beverage de...

Based on the molecular findings that many bitter taste receptors (T2Rs) are expressed within the same receptor cells, it has been proposed that bitter taste is encoded by the activation of discrete neural elements. Here we examined how a variety of bitter stimuli are represented by neural activity in central gustatory neurons. Taste responses (spikes/s) evoked by bathing the tongue and palate w...

Cucurbitacins (Cus) are a class of highly oxidized tetracyclic triterpenoids that confer a bitter taste to cucurbits such as cucumber, melon, watermelon, squash, and pumpkin. To date, a large number of Cus and Cu-derived compounds have been isolated from the Cucurbitaceae family and from other species of the plant (Alghasham, 2013; Shang et al., 2014). Cus have a range of biological and pharmac...

The ability to taste bitterness evolved to safeguard most animals, including humans, against potentially toxic substances, thereby leading to food rejection. Nonetheless, bitter perception is subject to individual variations due to the presence of genetic functional polymorphisms in bitter taste receptor (TAS2R) genes, such as the long-known association between genetic polymorphisms in TAS2R38 ...

An improved colorimetric method for determination of cyanide content in bitter almond oil was developed. The optimal determination parameters were as follows: volume ratio of hydrochloric acid to bitter almond oil (v/v), 1.5:1; holding time for hydrolysis, 120 min; and volume ratio of distillation solution to bitter almond oil (v/v), 8:1. Analytical results showed that the relative standard dev...

The recent discovery of mammalian bitter, sweet, and umami taste receptors indicates how the different taste qualities are encoded at the periphery. However, taste representations in the brain remain elusive. We used a genetic approach to visualize the neuronal circuitries of bitter and sweet tastes in mice to gain insight into how taste recognition is accomplished in the brain. By selectively ...