A bitter taste in your ... stomach. (Biology).Animals quickly learn to avoid most foods with a bitter taste because these often contain dangerous toxins. Bitterness "is a signal telling us that something is quite wrong in the food we've ingested in·gest tr.v. in·gest·ed, in·gest·ing, in·gests 1. To take into the body by the mouth for digestion or absorption. See Synonyms at eat. 2. ," says Enrique Rozengurt of the University of California, Los Angeles UCLA comprises the College of Letters and Science (the primary undergraduate college), seven professional schools, and five professional Health Science schools. Since 2001, UCLA has enrolled over 33,000 total students, and that number is steadily rising. School of Medicine. It's a handy protective mechanism, and animals may depend on more than their tongues to detect bitter substances, Rozengurt and his colleagues find. In the Feb. 19 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, usually referred to as PNAS, is the official journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences. , they report that parts of the rodent gastrointestinal tract gastrointestinal tract n. The part of the digestive system consisting of the stomach, small intestine, and large intestine. Gastrointestinal tract harbor the same bitter-taste receptors as tongues do. They further reveal that a lab-grown line of cells derived from a rat's small intestine small intestine Long, narrow, convoluted tube in which most digestion takes place. It extends 22–25 ft (6.7–7.6 m), from the stomach to the large intestine. makes these receptors and reacts to bitter substances in a manner similar to taste buds. Rozengurt speculates that the stomach's ability to sense bitterness may induce animals to vomit out potentially dangerous foods. He also suggests that scientists should reevaluate the role of the stomach in overall taste perception. --J.T. |
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