“Bioelectronic super-taster” device based on taste receptor-carbon nanotube hybrid structuresElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Experimental procedures, supplementary tables, and supplementary figures. See DOI: 10.1039/c0lc00648c

We have developed a method to monitor the activities of human taste receptor protein in lipid membrane using carbon nanotube transistors, enabling a “bioelectronic super-taster (BST)”, a taste sensor with human-tongue-like selectivity. In this work, human bitter taste receptor protein expressed in E. coliwas immobilized on a single-walled carbon nanotube field effect transistor (swCNT-FET) with the lipid membrane. Then, the protein binding activity was monitored using the underlying swCNT-FET, leading to the operation as a BST device. The fabricated BST device could detect bitter tastants at 100 fM concentrations and distinguish between bitter and non-bitter tastants with similar chemical structures just like a human tongue. Furthermore, this strategy was utilized to differentiate the responses of tasteror non-tastertypes of the bitter taste receptor proteins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]