Taste (PTC / bitter) in 2: Brassica liking and culture

TAS2R38 is major for PTC; taste overall is polygenic. Broader phenotype involving papillae density and more loci. Avoid lining students up as racial types after a strip test. Hypotheses involve plant toxins; evidence is debated. Earwax ABCC11; genetic-structure; race-is-not-biology.

Not medical advice — talk to clinicians for disorders of taste. Bitter receptors on the tongue bind compounds and signal “avoid” with different intensities. PTC is a synthetic stand-in historically used to reveal alleles. Separate PTC demo from whole-diet preference. Environment and learning reshape liking.

Never convert tasting to racial typology. Allele charts look patchy because of drift, selection hypotheses and migration. Continental labels on a chart are sampling conveniences, not subspecies. Taster alleles rise and fall across regions without matching folk race maps. Neighbors can differ more than distant averages suggest.