The sense of taste provides animals with valuable information about the quality and nutritional value of food. A family of G protein coupled receptors are involved in taste perception and include T1R, which is involved in sweet and umami taste perception and T2R, which is involved in bitter taste perception. Both types of taste receptors couple to various G proteins to initiate signal transduction cascades. T2R49 plays a role in sensing the chemical composition of the gastrointestinal content. T2R49 is expressed in subsets of taste receptor cells of the tongue and exclusively in gustducin-positive cells.