SCIENCE / MEDICINE : A Computer With Taste
Compiled from Times Wire and Staff Reports
A California chemist said last week that by using new knowledge about the chemical structures of sweet things, he has taught a computer to predict what a molecule will taste like before it is created. The work may reduce the need for special panels of human tasters to review everything food chemists concoct.
Murray Goodman of UC San Diego said his computer model can forecast whether a type of molecule known as a peptide will be sweet, bitter or tasteless.
Using the model, “We can take a sweet peptide and move a single carbon atom from one slot to another and lose the taste entirely,” Goodman said during a national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.
