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Figure 1 | BMC Neuroscience

Figure 1

From: Expression of Galpha14 in sweet-transducing taste cells of the posterior tongue

Figure 1

Of Gαq family members only Gα14 shows a taste bud-selective pattern. A. RT-PCR on isolated taste buds shows that Gα14, Gαq and Gα11 are all expressed in vallate (val), foliate (fo) and palate (pal). Fungiform (fu) taste buds express Gα11 but Gα14 and Gαq are not readily detected. Of these Gα subunits, only Gα14 is expressed in a taste-selective fashion (i.e. is absent from non-taste lingual epithelium [nt]). Brain (br) cDNA and water in place of cDNA (-) served as positive and negative controls run in parallel for all PCRs. Predicted sizes of products (in basepairs) are to the right. All templates were also analyzed for PLCβ2, a gene expressed in all taste buds and for β-actin, expressed in all cells. B. Quantitative RT-PCR shows that only Gα14 is prominently expressed in a taste-selective manner. mRNA from three samples of CV taste buds (T = gray bars) and of nontaste lingual epithelium (nt = white bars) were analyzed for expression of Gαq, Gα11 and Gα14. The same samples were also analyzed in parallel for β-actin as a normalization control and PLCβ2 as a taste-selective marker.

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