Question: How did you investigate why sugar is sweet?

Silvia Imberti answered on 13 Mar 2019:

We put sugar in water, this is our sample. the sample goes in a cell, which is made of metal (as for neutrons some metal are transparent, while water isn’t. Weird isn’t it?) and flash this beam of neutrons through the cell. We record the position of neutrons before and after the sample. We reconstruct the neutron trajectories and therefore the position of the atoms that deviated their trajectory. It is called scattering. it is the only way of “seeing things” that are this small. We discovered that sugars that are the most sweet, to make more hydrogen bonds with water. So we think they can also make more hydrogen bonds with the sweetness receptor that is the big molecule in our body that recognises sweet molecules and sends a message to the brain.