Abstract
MANY bitter-tasting substances produced by plants are known, but no conclusive relationship between bitterness and chemical structure has been proposed. Shallenberger and Acree1 recently related a sweet taste to certain molecular features, and reported that sweet compounds possessed a proton–donor group (DH) and a proton–acceptor group (A), and that these groups should be in positions such that the proton of the former and the orbital of the latter are at an average distance of 3 Å, a distance that makes intramolecular hydrogen bonding impossible.
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References
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KUBOTA, T., KUBO, I. Bitterness and Chemical Structure. Nature 223, 97–99 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1038/223097a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/223097a0
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