Here we go:
Due to the obesity epidemic in the United States and the rapid increase in the incidence of type-2 diabetes, there is major emphasis on the production of calorie-free and glucose-free sweeteners in the food industry. Since sweetness is as much a matter of the presence of a sweet substance as it is the matter of its perception by taste buds, modifying taste buds could be used as an alternative to change one’s perception of sweetness. Proteins like miraculin possess such taste-bud modifying properties that make them of specific interest for this application. Miraculin is capable of temporarily modifying taste buds in the presence of acid (sour) to elicit a sweet taste response. Due to the low bioavailability and short shelf life of the plant that produces miraculin naturally, Richadella dulcifica, the large-scale use of the protein has proven to be very cost-prohibitive. In order to make the protein more accessible, the miraculin gene has been cloned and the protein has been produced in transgenic plants.
My research is aimed at optimizing the production of miraculin in routinely consumed plants (e.g. cucumber or tomato) by targeting production of the protein to the edible fruiting portions of the plant using tissue-specific promoter sequences. Once the protein is produced, we hope to evaluate its functionality in vitro using cultured human taste cells.
