Taste sensor with multiarray lipid/polymer membranes

A potentiometric taste sensor with multiarray lipid/polymer membranes was developed about 30 years ago. This taste sensor is called an electronic tongue with global selectivity, which implies the ability to classify the taste of foods into five basic tastes and quantify them. It has already been commercialized and utilized in food and pharmaceutical companies worldwide. The sensor can measure the gustatory phenomena occurring on the tongue and can furthermore express the taste felt by the brain through a chemometric approach. In this paper, we review studies on the taste sensor and the latest developments such as improved durability and reusability, the quantification of bitterness suppressed by high-potency sweeteners, and the evaluation of the saltiness enhancement effect. The last topic refers to a new mechanism of potentiometric measurement to detect noncharged bitter substances using allostery, which is applicable to many types of protein in biological systems.