Some of these proteins are thought to bind to flavour compounds in food as well as to taste receptor cells in the mouth.

The charge of the protein plays also an important role in its interaction with the sweet taste receptor.

The human tongue has 100 to 150 taste receptor cells on each of its roughly ten thousand taste buds.

The compounds can be searched by name, chemical structure, similarity to other bitter compounds, association with a particular human bitter taste receptor, and so on.

Many bitter taste receptor genes also have confusing synonym names with several different gene names referring to the same gene.