Meet the Scientist Index Charles S. Zuker Explore and Discover with Charles S. Zuker: Perception: Taste, Smell and Vision Biography Charles S. Zuker is a professor of biology at the University of California San Diego and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. His research focuses on understanding vision, touch and taste at the molecular level. For each of the senses, the ìbig pictureî question is: how do sensory organs translate information about the outside world into the nerve impulses they send to the brain. The answers to these questions should help researchers better understand how sensory organ defects can lead to problems with vision, hearing, taste etc. Zuker's group has identified genes for sweet and bitter taste receptors, as well as a receptor for savory tastes, or umami. In fact, they discovered an entire family of bitter receptor genes. Now that they have identified the genes, Zuker and colleagues are studying how the taste receptors are organized on the tongue and are elucidating the pathways that carry taste information to the brain. Their research may lead to new types of food additives, for example "bitter blockers" that could make healthy foods like brussel sprouts more palatable for finicky eaters, or make it unnecessary to use "a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down." (photo credit: Barbara Ries, Howard Hughes Medical Institute)