Department of Biological, Geological, and Environmental Sciences (BiGeA), Laboratory of Molecular Anthropology and Centre for Genome Biology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Adv Nutr. 2020 Nov 16;11(6):1671-1685. doi: 10.1093/advances/nmaa078.
Ecological sensing and inflammation have evolved to ensure optima between organism survival and reproductive success in different and changing environments. At the molecular level, ecological sensing consists of many types of receptors located in different tissues that orchestrate integrated responses (immune, neuroendocrine systems) to external and internal stimuli. This review describes emerging data on taste and chemosensory receptors, proposing them as broad ecological sensors and providing evidence that taste perception is shaped not only according to sense epitopes from nutrients but also in response to highly diverse external and internal stimuli. We apply a biological anthropological approach to examine how ecological sensing has been shaped by these stimuli through human evolution for complex interkingdom communication between a host and pathological and symbiotic bacteria, focusing on population-specific genetic diversity. We then focus on how these sensory receptors play a major role in inflammatory processes that form the basis of many modern common metabolic diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and aging. The impacts of human niche construction and cultural evolution in shaping environments are described with emphasis on consequent biological responsiveness.
生态感应和炎症反应已经进化到可以确保生物在不同和不断变化的环境中生存和繁殖成功的最佳状态。在分子水平上，生态感应由位于不同组织中的许多类型的受体组成，这些受体协调对外部和内部刺激的综合反应（免疫、神经内分泌系统）。本综述描述了味觉和化学感应受体的新数据，提出它们作为广泛的生态传感器，并提供证据表明，味觉感知不仅是根据营养物质的感觉表位形成的，而且还会对高度多样化的外部和内部刺激做出反应。我们应用生物人类学的方法来研究生态感应是如何通过人类进化来适应这些刺激的，以实现宿主与病理和共生细菌之间复杂的跨界交流，重点关注特定人群的遗传多样性。然后，我们将重点关注这些感觉受体如何在炎症过程中发挥重要作用，这些炎症过程是许多现代常见代谢疾病（如肥胖症、2 型糖尿病和衰老）的基础。本文还描述了人类小生境构建和文化进化在塑造环境方面的影响，并强调了由此产生的生物反应性。
