Patent ID: 7892765

Claim:
A method of screening for a compound that modulates sweet taste signaling in taste cells, the method comprising the steps of: (i) contacting the compound with a hetero-oligomeric taste transduction G-protein coupled receptor that responds to sweet taste stimuli; wherein said hetero-oligomeric receptor comprises a first polypeptide which contains a region encoded by a nucleic acid sequence that specifically hybridizes under stringent hybridization conditions to a human T1R2 nucleic acid comprising the nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO: 3 and has at least 90% sequence identity to an extracellular or a transmembrane domain of the human T1R2 of SEQ ID NO: 4, and further comprises a second polypeptide which contains a region encoded by a nucleic acid sequence that specifically hybridizes under stringent hybridization conditions to the human T1R3 nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO: 5 and has at least 90% sequence identity to an extracellular or a transmembrane domain of the human T1R3 of SEQ ID NO: 6; wherein stringent hybridization conditions comprise conducting the hybridization reaction at 42 degrees C. in a solution comprising 50% formamide, 5×SSC, and 1% SDS and washing at 65 degrees C. in a solution comprising 0.2.×SSC and 0.1% SDS; and (ii) determining whether said compound binds to and/or affects the activity of said hetero-oligomeric sweet receptor, and thereby modulates sweet taste signaling in taste cells.