- Detection, assessment, ingestion and digestion of food key for all animals.

- Chemical cues particularly important nutritional value, toxic components;

much known about the sensory mechanisms.
- But: food texture texture is the sensory and functional manifestation of the
structural, mechanical and surface properties of foods detected through the
senses of vision, hearing, touch and kinesthetics Szczesniak2002) is also
important: for ingestibility (oro-sensory processing) and digestibility
(gastrointestinal processing and transit times), and may also be a sign of food
quality (e.g. rotten/spoiled food texture?). In humans texture influences rate of
consumption, satiety etc; key part of human nutrition and cuisine.
- Notably, for small animals, which live, move, mate and oviposit upon their
food sources, texture is even more important to avoid becoming stuck,
drowning etc. (some literature on insect texture/feeding/oviposition)
- The sensory mechanisms underlying texture detection are poorly understood
(what is known in the literature multimodal Szczesniak2002)
- D. melanogaster as model for sensory biology, many of whose behaviours
occur directly on their food sources (fermentating fruit etc); we decided to
investigate if and how this insect detects and responds to food texture
I would introduce the anatomical/molecular aspects of mechanosensation in
taste sensilla only during the results.
Feeding is an essential and complex process in the animal kingdom as all live
forms recquire to extract energy from the environment for its survival. (To do
so, a careful process of quality evaluation of the food is needed, where the it
will be evaluated for its edibility or toxicity.) Different sensory mechanisms are
involved in this evaluation, being the gustatory system a key player detecting
the chemicals that form the taste of the food. In addition to the chemicals
contained in the food, which will tell the animal how sweet or bitter a certain
food is for example, texture is another quality which is also perceived. Texture
is a complex property of the food, which includes the detection of a range of
qualities in the food. When food is evaluated in our mouth we are able to
distinguish many different levels of texturity as softness, hardness,
gumminess The different muscles controling the pressure we make with
our teeth to tear down the food and the sensitivity of the tongue, will provide
information about the food quality.The integration of this information will
provide the information about the texture of the food, making it a multimodal
integration. All those properties will be assesed in conjuction with the chemical
properties to (dar un veredicto) about the food. Texture is a key property in the
food as it not only influences the palatability of the food, but it will give
important information about the edibility. For example, a food containing large
hard particles will may chock us, while another juicy will be easy to chew. The
evaluation of food texture is also visualy inspected. We can discern liquid from
solid food and its particle content or level of (pieces?).
The quality of texture in food is very important and food industry invest large
quantities of its budget in making processed food with certain texture
properties. Consumers will prefer certains textures depending on its cultural
background or it will tell them about the freshness of the food. Although it is
agreed that texture detection plays a key role in human feeding, few things

are known regarding its receptor and cellular components and the fact that it
is the result of a multimodal integration property makes its study specially
challenging.
-(The finding of softeness in a food which is expected to be more solid can
lead to a rejection of the custumer. Equally, cultural aspects must be taking
into account, when new food is brought to a country or social group, stablish
ideas about how food should be presented can affect its acceptance.)
For vertebrates and humans in particular, texture is a quality which is
constatly evaluated even if we are not aware of it but that influences our
choice when feeding. Such an important property in food is not only detected by vertebrates, other
animals may use the detection of this property to evaluate the quality of the
food. In this sense, small insects, which interact to some extent differently
from vertebrates with the food, may well detect this property. Many times,
insects will walk and develope in the food they feed from (for example
fermenting fruit). This interaction will be essential for its survival. If an insect is
not able to distinguish a liquid from a solid food, when landing onto it for
feeding it will may sink and die. Additionally, laying eggs on a surface too hard
will prevent the future larvae from feeding as they will be unable to chew the
food. Drosophila melanogaster offers a great advantge to study this property
of the food. While in vertebrates the texture detection is a multimodal process
which involves not only the mechanical perception of the food (particles,
stiffness) plus the muscles used in mastication, we can focus on only one
aspect of the food: stiffness and relate it to the detection of the texture. The
ability to manipulate Drosophila will give us the possibility of studying
candidate receptors and neurons involved in this process.
While the study of chemical detection has been well studied, few things are
known about the receptors and cells involved in this process.