Recent advances in development of biosensors for taste-related analyses

• DOI: 10.1016/j.trac.2020.115925
• Publication Date: 2020-06-04T06:03:49Z
• Authors: Ninglong Zhang; Xuan Wei; Yuxia Fan; Xirui Zhou; Yuan Liu
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 0303 health sciences; 03 medical and health sciences

Abstract With the continuous research breakthroughs on the gustatory system, special biosensors have been developed for taste-related analyses, such as taste perception, transduction, signaling pathways, and taste detection. Taste biosensors provide high sensitivity and specificity for taste analysis, which can achieve real-time and efficient acquisition of taste information in the target object. Moreover, partial-taste biosensors have been integrated based on mimic or natural taste components of mammals (e.g. taste epithelium, taste cells, taste receptors or whole animals). Thus, they have become a main research component of gustatory system correlations. At present, taste biosensors are still under development, the limitation of their application mainly caused by long-term storage/performance stability, high cost, and low production yield. Overcoming these shortcomings will drive the research for practical application of taste biosensors. The review aims to show the great potential of taste biosensors for gustatory system-related analysis and taste detection, and to provide an update on advances in taste-based biosensors. In addition, the challenges and future perspectives of these devices in performance improvement, development and application are discussed.