Researchers at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Harvard Medical School have identified a gene as the blueprint for a sweetness receptor. And of course it has nothing to do with any tooth at all. They've been looking for this receptor without success, until now, says Dr. Robert Margolskee of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. This is almost certainly it, says Margolskee. We're not 100 percent sure that this is it, but I would say that we're 99 percent sure that this is it.
Some people seem to crave sweets more than others.
This we knew, but we didn't know why. Now this genetic discovery of a blueprint for a sweetness receptor. And do these potential differences relate to why someone else would have a sweet tooth and eat lots of cake and ice cream, and why someone else would not have a sweet tooth. Margolskee, who is also affiliated with theHughes Institute, is the lead author of a study reported in the May issue of the Journal Nature Genetics, which is out Monday. There's also a report in the new issue of Nature Neuroscience.