Chemosensory perception is an exploratory tool used in indigenous and traditional medicine to collect information about the medicinal plants and to assign certain values (therapeutic, hedonic, alarm/toxic values) to the particular gustatory and olfactory sensations. The flavors are also associated with certain target organs in ethnomedicine. For instance, in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), sweet flavor corresponds to Spleen/Pancreas, pungent to Lungs, salty to Kidney, sour to Liver, and bitter to Heart.
Chemosensory sensations represent a biocultural process, rooted in human biology and culture, but also shaped by individual experience. These sensations may result in specific uses of the medicinal plants as well as in differences across various ethnomedical systems.
Important recent advances in the chemosenses science (e.g. the discovery of extraoral taste receptors, extranasal olfactory receptors, identification of transient receptor potential channels -TRPs- as temperature-sensing receptors, also involved in pungency perception), as well as the available large databases on tissue-specific gene expression (e.g. https://gtexportal.org/home/, https://www.proteinatlas.org/, https://www.bgee.org/, https://www.uniprot.org/) may shed a new light on this ancient medical epistemology.
In this scientific framework, many questions arise. Is it possible that these old concepts be not completely devoid of a biological basis? Is the taste of plants and phytochemicals predictive (at least of some) of the pharmacological activities? Might TCM flavor- organ pairs have a correspondent in the tissue specific taste/olfactory receptor gene expression levels and phenotypes? To which degree do different ethnomedical systems share similar therapeutic roles based on certain chemosensory sensation?
The goal of the present issue is to broaden and update the theoretical basis of the chemosensorial approach in (ethno)pharmacology, to evaluate its potential innovative contribution in accelerating bioprospection and drug discovery, to gain novel insights into the complex chemosensory interaction between plants and humans.
We welcome submissions of different types of manuscripts including original research papers, reviews, methods, clinical trials, and data reports, including but not limited to:
1. Cross-cultural studies focused on the ethnopharmacological values assigned to various tastes/flavors
2. Phytochemical and metabolomic analyses of medicinal plants, with organoleptic associations;
3. Role of organoleptic evaluation in substitution of rare or endangered plants in a multiherbal formula (e.g. abhava pratinidhi dravya or drug substitution concept in Ayurveda), enabling the sustainable conservation and better utilization of botanical resources.
4. Association between plant organoleptic profile and their bioactivity/pharmacological activity;
5. Evaluation of the druggability of various taste receptors, olfactory receptors or other chemosensors.
6. Understanding the TCM correspondence between the five flavors and organs; Utility of genomics/epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and bioinformatics in the identification/determination of patterns of taste/olfactory receptors tissue-specific expression, evaluation in connection with ethnomedical knowledge
7. Ethnomedical means of drug identification by taste. Understanding the ayurvedic ethnopharmacological descriptors rasa (taste), vipaka (post-digestive effect), virya (potency) or TCM flavor in the light of chemosenses science;
8. Studies focused on the medical anthropology of chemosenses
Disclaimer: We welcome submissions of different types of manuscripts with varying methodologies and all studies must be based on a testable hypothesis. Studies lacking such a hypothesis or which do not offer significant advances in chemosensory research will be rejected without peer review. Pharmacological studies without connection to taste or olfaction are outside of the scope of this research topic.
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All the manuscripts submitted to the collection will need to fully comply with the
Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version
here).
