Nutrient Sensing by Lingual G-Protein-Coupled Taste Receptors.

The isolation of taste receptor cells allows for the physiological characterization of their responses to the chemical stimuli in potential food items. This provides a mechanism to evaluate the different signaling pathways used by these cells to convert external chemical signals into output signals that are sent to the brain for processing. To preserve their physiological response profiles, these cells are freshly isolated for analysis. Here, we describe the procedure for isolating individual taste receptor cells from mouse taste buds and loading them with fluorescent dyes to perform live cell imaging.