Chicken taste receptors and perception: recent advances in our understanding of poultry nutrient-sensing systems

SUMMARY: The sense of taste plays an important role in the detection of nutrients or toxic substances in foods, and it is deeply related to the feeding behaviours of animals. Thus, elucidation of the taste-sensing system in chickens can improve our understanding of poultry nutrition and will be useful to make new alternative feedstuffs. In this review, we summarise the recent advances in the study of taste buds, taste receptors and taste perception in chickens. Recent studies have revealed the distribution of taste buds in the oral cavity of chickens and the expression of multiple taste receptors in the oral and gastrointestinal tissues of chickens. Functional analyses have shown that chicken taste receptors can recognise amino acids, fatty acids, and a wide variety of bitter compounds, and the activities of chicken bitter taste receptors can be inhibited by 6-methoxyflavanone. Behavioural analyses have demonstrated that chickens can respond to amino acids, bitter stimuli, salty stimuli, sour stimuli and fatty acids, but chickens have a low taste sensitivity for sugars. The recent histological, molecular biological, and behavioural evidence indicates that chickens have well-developed nutrient-sensing systems.