Washington, May 24 (ANI): Sugar isn't always sweet to German cockroaches, a new study has found.
In the study, North Carolina State University entomologists showed that the neural mechanism behind the aversion to glucose, the simple sugar that is a popular ingredient in roach-bait poison.
Glucose sets off bitter receptors in roach taste buds, causing roaches to avoid foods that bring on this taste-bud reaction.
This aversion has a genetic basis and it eventually spreads to offspring, resulting in increasingly large groups of cockroaches that reject glucose and any baits made with it.
In normal German cockroaches, glucose elicits activity in sugar gustatory receptor neurons, which react when exposed to sugars like glucose and fructose - components of corn syrup, a common roach-bait ingredient. Generally, roaches have a sweet tooth for these sugars.
"We don't know if glucose actually tastes bitter to glucose-averse roaches, but we do know that glucose triggers the bitter receptor neurons that would be triggered by caffeine or other bitter compounds," Dr. Coby Schal, the Blanton J. Whitmire Distinguished Professor of Entomology at NC State and the corresponding author of the paper, said.
"That causes the glucose-averse roach to close its mouth and run away from glucose in tests," Schal said.
But it's not just a sugar aversion. Roaches exposed to fructose were happy to partake of its sweetness.
Glucose-averse roaches that were forced to taste glucose refused to ingest the sugar, akin to a child who spits out her bitter-tasting food.
Normal cockroaches, meanwhile, were happy to eat glucose.
The study is published in the journal Science. (ANI)
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