Whether or not animals can taste basic or alkaline food and how they do it has remained a mystery until now. A research group led by Yali Zhang, Ph.D., principal investigator at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, recently addressed this question, as they similarly did for sour taste in 2021 on the lower end of the pH scale. Their work, published today in Nature Metabolism, identified a previously unknown chloride ion channel, which they named alkaliphile (Alka), as a taste receptor for alkaline pH.