Charles Zuker
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Charles S. Zuker is a Chilean molecular geneticist and neurobiologist. His lab, in collaboration with Nick Ryba at the NIH, have transformed our understanding of mammalian taste. Beginning in the late 1990s Zuker and Ryba identified and characterized the cells mediating all five basic taste modalities: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami. They then demonstrated that individual taste receptor cells are tuned to encode individual taste qualities, and are hardwired to trigger innate behaviors (like attraction to sweet and aversion to bitters). In a set of milestone studies exploring the central coding of taste, and combining molecular genetics, physiology, brain imaging, animal behavior, and optical control of neural circuits, Zuker and collaborators demonstrated that each taste is preferentially represented in its own cortical field in the brain, and that by manipulating the brain fields representing sweet and bitter taste they could directly control an animal’s internal representation, sensory perception, and behavioral actions.
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1957 (age 68)
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