Artificial sweeteners differentially activate sweet and bitter gustatory neurons in Drosophila.

ABSTRACT: Artificial sweeteners are highly sweet, non-nutritive compounds that have become increasingly popular over recent decades despite research suggesting that their consumption has unintended consequences. Specifically, there is evidence suggesting that some of these chemicals interact with bitter taste receptors, implying that sweeteners likely generate complex chemosensory signals. Here, we report the basic sensory characteristics of sweeteners in Drosophila, a common model system used to study the impacts of diet, and find that all noncaloric sweeteners inhibited appetitive feeding responses at higher concentrations. At a cellular level, we found that sucralose and rebaudioside A co-activated sweet and bitter gustatory receptor neurons (GRNs), two populations that reciprocally impact feedin

SUBMITTER: Arntsen C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12216712 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature