The research shows that the taste of calcium is detected by two receptors on the tongue. One is a calcium-sensing receptor called CaSR that has been found by other researchers in the parathyroid glands, kidney, brain and gastrointestinal tract. “We didn’t know it was on the tongue before,” Tordoff said. The other is a receptor known as T1R3. This is a component of the “sweet-taste” receptor — a finding that researchers described as “very unexpected.”
The researchers measured the calcium preferences of 40 different strains of mice. “Most mice dislike calcium, but we found a very unusual strain that drinks it avidly,” Tordoff said. “By comparing the genes of this strain with other strains, we were able to identify the two calcium taste genes.”