Post-Genome Biology of Primates Focusing on Taste Perception

There are many studies on the feeding behavior of primates as related to their environment. However, it has remained unclear how they taste and select specific foods. In this chapter, we introduce recent progress in the molecular biology of taste receptors, as one of the targets of post-genome biology, mainly focusing on humans and chimpanzees. Because there are many intraspecies polymorphisms as well as species-specific changes in amino acid sequences of taste receptors, analyzing these variations in combination with behavioral tests and meta-genome ecology will provide clues for elucidating how primates taste and select specific foods. This approach could also be applicable for elucidating the function of other species-specific or polymorphic genes found among the vast sequence data produced by genome projects.