ISHIMARU YOSHIRO    Department   Undergraduate School  , School of Agriculture    Position   Professor
Research Period	2015/04～2017/03
Research Topic	Investing the Mechanism of Salty Taste Reception and Response
Research Type	KAKENHI Research
Consignor	Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Research Program Type	Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
KAKENHI Grant No.	15K12334
Responsibility	Collaborative Researcher
Representative Person	ABE Keiko
Collaborative Researcher	ISHIMARU Yoshiro
Details	The present study aims to develop some salt taste-enhancing compounds. We constructed Skn-1a knocked-out mice (S-KO mice) in which sweet, bitter and umami taste recepting cells disappeared and sour taste recepting cell activity was enhanced 3 times. The RNA-seq analysis of this mouse made us find several copies of a candidate ion channel expressed specifically in Type I cells. These genes included an ion channel (X-channel) which stained the taste buds of S-KO mice. This channel was expressed in humans as well. Also, this X-channel was a sodium channel. To know the physiological property of this channel, this was introduced into HEK 293 cell, which was then submitted to electrophisical experiment. However, the HEK 293 cell did not respond to sodium ion. This proposes the possibility that the cell is associated with the transport of some other ions. To analyze the phenotype of X-channel, we constructed the KO mice to design the target sequence.