Heterogeneous distribution of taste cells in facial and vagal nerve-innervated taste buds

Input from the three gustatory nerves of vertebrates is used to evaluate the nutritional quality of food. In some species, these cranial nerves are modified to accomplish additional specific functions. For example, the facial nerve innervated taste buds distributed over the body surface of catfish aid food search. Physiological studies indicate that this extra-oral taste pathway is more sensitive to amino acids than either the glossopharyngeal or vagal systems of the oral cavity. The current investigation seeks to determine if differences in taste cell subtypes might contribute to the observed differences in sensitivity. The distributions of five low molecular weight metabolites, l-alanine, l-aspartate, l-glutamate, GABA, taurine and the tripeptide glutathione, were examined in 2118 individual taste cells innervated by either the facial or vagal nerve of the channel catfish, Ictalurus punctatus. The metabolite profiles of these cells were determined immunocytochemically and subjected to a k-means clustering algorithm. Fifteen cell classes with quantitatively different patterns of metabolite co-localization were identified. All but one small class of two cells were found in both facial and vagal nerve-innervated taste buds. Four classes (9% of the total cells) had high, two classes (17%) had intermediate and the remaining nine classes (74%) had low levels of GABA immunoreactivity. While the functional significance of differences in metabolite profile remains to be determined, taste cell classes were not uniformly distributed across vagal and facial nerve innervated taste buds and may provide an anatomical basis for previously reported differences in gustatory sensitivity.