How do we sense the world around us? This is the question that drives research in the lab. The first step in sensory processing is the transduction of the sensory stimulus into an electrical signal sent to the brain. For most sensory stimuli, the receptors have been discovered, yielding insights into signal transduction, behavior and evolution. We have focused on the taste system, where receptors continue to be identified. In pursuit of the receptor for sour taste, we recently discovered a proton-selective ion channel that is expressed in cells that detect sour tastes (Tu et al, Science 2018). OTOP1 is a member of a family of proteins unrelated to other ion channels, all of which form proton channels. In 2019, the lab showed that OTOP1 functions as a sour taste receptor (Teng et al, Curr Biol, 2019). More recently, we showed that OTOP1 functions as a sensor for the taste of ammonium chloride, a compound called salmiak that in Northern European and Scandinavian countries is used in salty licorice. (Liang et al, Nat Comms, 2023), OTOP1 is also found in the vestibular system and brown adipose tissue while OTOP2 and OTOP3 are found in the digestive tract and nervous system. Our studies lay the groundwork for future work aimed at understanding the contribution of OTOP channels to signaling in a variety of cellular contexts, in health and disease.

EMILY LIMAN, PhD

Harold W. Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience, Professor of Biological Sciences, Sections of Neurobiology and Molecular and Computational Biology

Professor Liman graduated from Princeton University and earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in Neuroscience. She is the 2023 recipient of the Cole award from the Biophysical Society.