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Nicholas Ryba, Ph.D.

Nicholas Ryba, Ph.D.Senior Investigator
Chief, Taste and Smell Section

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH/NIDCR
BUILDING 10 ROOM 1A24
10 Center Drive, MSC 1188
BETHESDA MD 20892-1188

Phone: (301) 402-2401
Fax: (301) 480-3590
Email: nryba@mail.nih.gov

Biographical Sketch

Nick Ryba received his degrees in biochemistry (B.A., 1982 and D. Phil., 1986) from Oxford University, Oxford, UK. He completed post-doctoral training at the Max-Planck-Institut-für-biophysikalishe-Chemie in Göttingen, Germany and the University of Leeds, UK under the guidance of Drs. Derek Marsh and John Findlay. In 1991, he joined NIDR (now NIDCR) to establish an independent group studying the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the perception of taste and smell. He now heads the Laboratory of Sensory Biology, NIDCR and his section focuses primarily on understanding the biology of taste but also retains a keen interest in the sense of smell.

Research Interests/Scientific Focus

Our senses provide us with a faithful internal representation of the external world. We are interested in basic questions of sensory perception and have focused on the chemical senses, taste and smell, as powerful models to explore how sensory signals are detected and distinguished.

Olfaction provides animals with a broad sensory experience: we can distinguish a remarkable number of distinct odors, most of which have no intrinsic meaning or valance. Over the past 20 years the field of olfaction has been dominated by Linda Buck and Richard Axel’s discovery of a vast family of odorant receptors (~ 3 % of mouse genes encode odorant receptors). Recently, we have been generating mouse models with altered odorant receptor expression and examining fundamental questions concerning how this influences gene choice, circuit wiring and olfactory function. Some of this work has been carried out in collaboration with Leo Belluscio, NINDS.

The sense of taste has a much more specialized function than olfaction and serves as a dominant regulator and driver of feeding behavior. The taste system categorizes diverse chemical stimuli into just a handful of distinct perceptual qualities (e.g. sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and the savory taste, umami). This limited palette of taste qualities provides animals with valuable information about whether to consume or reject a particular item of food or drink and most probably evolved in this form to facilitate such binary decisions.

Over the past 15 years, in a wonderful collaborative research effort with Charles Zuker, HHMI, Columbia University, we have identified the taste receptors for sweet, bitter, salty and savory stimuli and the logic of coding for all five distinct taste qualities at the periphery in mice. These studies have revealed that each taste quality is encoded by activation of a specific and distinct population of taste receptor cells that are hardwired to trigger the appropriate behavioral response. Identification of selective markers of each class of taste receptor cell provides a powerful approach to mark the cells, define the corresponding signaling pathways and to begin to trace and functionally manipulate the respective neuronal connectivity circuits. Our current work is largely focused on understanding how detection leads to perception. We are using a combination of mouse behavioral paradigms, molecular-genetic and viral based gene delivery platforms, together with electrophysiological and functional imaging approaches to study how taste receptor cell stimulation is transmitted to the brain and encoded there. Ultimately we hope to help uncover how simple stimuli like sugar reliably generate a complex perceptual quality like sweetness and how taste input combines with other sensory modalities (e.g. olfaction and somatosensation) as well as internal state (e.g. hunger, satiety, etc.) to pattern behavior.

Selected Publications

  1. 1. Chen, X., Gabitto, M., Peng, Y., Ryba, N. J. P. and Zuker, C. S. (2011) A gustotopic map of taste qualities in the mammalian brain. Science 333, 1262-126
  2. Nguyen, M. Q., Marks, C. A., Belluscio, L. and Ryba, N. J. P. (2010) Early expression of odorant receptors distorts the olfactory circuitry. J Neurosci. 30, 9271-9279
  3. Chandrashekar, J., Kuhn, C., Oka, Y., Yarmolinsky, D. A., Hummler, E., Ryba, N. J. P. and Zuker, C. S. (2010) The cells and peripheral representation of sodium taste in mice. Nature. 464, 297-301
  4. Yarmolinsky, D. A., Zuker, C. S. and Ryba, N. J. P. (2009) Common sense about taste: from mammals to insects. Cell. 139, 234-244
  5. Chandrashekar, J., Yarmolinsky, D., von Buchholtz, L., Oka, Y., Sly, W., Ryba, N. J. P. and Zuker, C. S. (2009) The taste of carbonation. Science 326, 443-445
  6. Nguyen, M. Q., Zhou, Z., Marks, C. A., Ryba, N. J. P. and Belluscio, L. (2007) Prominent roles for odorant receptor coding sequences in allelic exclusion. Cell. 131, 1009-1017
  7. Huang, A. L., Chen, X., Hoon, M. A., Chandrashekar, J., Guo, W., Trankner, D., Ryba, N. J. P. and Zuker, C. S. (2006) The cells and logic for mammalian sour taste detection. Nature. 442, 934-938
  8. Mueller, K. L., Hoon, M. A., Erlenbach, I., Chandrashekar, J., Zuker, C. S. and Ryba, N. J. P. (2005) The receptors and coding logic for bitter taste. Nature. 434, 225-229
  9. Zhao, G. Q., Zhang, Y., Hoon, M. A., Chandrashekar, J., Erlenbach, I., Ryba, N. J. P. and Zuker, C. S. (2003) The receptors for mammalian sweet and umami taste. Cell. 115, 255-266
  10. Zhang, Y., Hoon, M. A., Chandrashekar, J., Mueller, K. L., Cook, B., Wu, D., Zuker, C. S. and Ryba, N. J. P. (2003) Coding of sweet, bitter, and umami tastes: different receptor cells sharing similar signaling pathways. Cell. 112, 293-301
  11. Nelson, G., Chandrashekar, J., Hoon, M. A., Feng, L., Zhao, G., Ryba, N. J. P. and Zuker, C. S. (2002) An amino-acid taste receptor. Nature. 416, 199-20
  12. Nelson, G., Hoon, M. A., Chandrashekar, J., Zhang, Y., Ryba, N. J. P. and Zuker, C. S. (2001) Mammalian sweet taste receptors. Cell. 106, 381-390
  13. Chandrashekar, J., Mueller, K. L., Hoon, M. A., Adler, E., Feng, L., Guo, W., Zuker, C. S. and Ryba, N. J. P. (2000) T2Rs function as bitter taste receptors. Cell. 100, 703-711
  14. Adler, E., Hoon, M. A., Mueller, K. L., Chandrashekar, J., Ryba, N. J. P. and Zuker, C. S. (2000) A novel family of mammalian taste receptors. Cell. 100, 693-702
  15. Hoon, M. A., Adler, E., Lindemeier, J., Battey, J. F., Ryba, N. J. P. and Zuker, C. S. (1999) Putative mammalian taste receptors: a class of taste-specific GPCRs with distinct topographic selectivity. Cell. 96, 541-551

 

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This page last updated: February 23, 2012