Two different second-messenger pathways have been implicated in sweet taste transduction: sugars produce cyclic AMP (cAMP), whereas synthetic sweeteners stimulate production of inositol 1,4,5-tris-phosphate (IP3) and diacylglycerol (DAG). Both sugars and sweeteners depolarize taste cells by blocking the same resting K+conductance, but the intermediate steps in the transduction pathways have not been examined. In this study, the loose-patch recording technique was used to examine the role of protein kinases and other downstream regulatory proteins in the two sweet transduction pathways. Bursts of action currents were elicited from ∼35% of fungiform taste buds in response to sucrose (200 mM) or NC-00274–01 (NC-01, 200 μM), a synthetic sweetener. To determine whether protein kinase C (PKC) plays a role in sweet transduction, taste buds were stimulated with the PKC activator PDBu (10 μM). In all sweet-responsive taste buds tested ( n = 11), PDBu elicited burst of action currents. In contrast, PDBu elicited responses in only 4 of 19 sweet-unresponsive taste buds. Inhibition of PKC by bisindolylmaleimide I (0.15 μM) resulted in inhibition of the NC-01 response by ∼75%, whereas the response to sucrose either increased or remained unchanged. These data suggest that activation of PKC is required for the transduction of synthetic sweeteners. To determine whether protein kinase A (PKA) is required for the transduction of sugars, sweet responses were examined in the presence of the membrane-permeant PKA inhibitor H-89 (10 and 19 μM). Surprisingly, H-89 did not decrease responses to either sucrose or NC-01. Instead, responses to both compounds were increased in the presence of the inhibitor. These data suggest that PKA is not required for the transduction of sugars, but may play a modulatory role in both pathways, such as adaptation of the response. We also examined whether Ca2+-calmodulin dependent cAMP phosphodiesterase (CaM-PDE) plays a role in sweet taste transduction, by examining responses to sucrose and synthetic sweeteners in the presence of the CaM-PDE inhibitor W-7 (100 μM). Inhibition resulted in an increase in the response to sucrose, whereas the response to NC-01 remained unchanged. These data suggest that the pathways for sugars and sweeteners are negatively coupled; the Ca2+ that is released from intracellular stores during stimulation with synthetic sweeteners may inhibit the response to sucrose by activation of CaM-PDE.
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