The development and maintenance of tastes buds within the oral epithelium appears to be dependent upon as yet undefined trophic factors released by gustatory nerves which innervate the buds and surrounding epithelium. It would be very desirable to have a culture system which allowed the development and relatively long term (weeks) maintenance of taste buds in order to examine more specifically using physiological and morphological techniques the nature of both the nerve fiber dependence and trophic factors required for taste bud development.
The specific aims of this proposal include: (a) Develop a basic culture system, as first with serum or serum substitutes, which will support maintenance of vallate and fungiform taste buds of rats in the presence of the IXth and Xth cranial ganglia, (b) Refine this basic culture system by attempting to replace serum with defined constituents, (c) Using at first the basic culture system, and later more defined modifications developed in this study, determine whether or not taste buds will develop or be maintained if nerve fibers from associated ganglia do no contact them, and (d) Examine the effects of conditioned medium derived from cultures of ganglia alone and combinations of ganglia and taste buds on the development and maintenance of taste buds. Data obtained from these studies would not only provide a better understanding of the biological basis of taste bud development and maintenance, but could provide some insight into reasons taste buds are lost after nerve lesions or in situations such as familial dysautomia.
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| Ruiz, C J; Stone, L M; McPheeters, M et al. (2001) Maintenance of rat taste buds in primary culture. Chem Senses 26:861-73 |
| Nelson, G M; Finger, T E (1993) Immunolocalization of different forms of neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) in rat taste buds. J Comp Neurol 336:507-16 |
