Innate immunity utilizes components of sensory signal transduction such as bitter and sweet taste receptors. In fact, empirical evidence has shown bitter and sweet taste receptors to be an integral component of antimicrobial immune response in upper respiratory tract infections. Since an efficient immune response plays a key role in the attainment of longevity, it is not surprising that the rs978739 polymorphism of the bitter taste receptor TAS2R16 gene has been shown to be associated with longevity in a population of 941 individuals ranging in age from 20 to 106 years from Calabria (Italy). There are many possible candidate genes for human longevity, however of the many genes tested, only APOE and FOXO3 survived to association in replication studies. So, it is necessary to validate in other studies genes proposed to be associated with longevity. Thus, we analysed the association of the quoted polymorphism in a population of long lived individuals (LLIs) and controls from another Italian population from Cilento. The analysis has been performed on data previously obtained with genome-wide association study on a population of LLIs (age range 90–109 years) and young controls (age range 18–45 years) from Cilento (Italy). Statistical power calculations showed that the analysed cohort represented by 410 LLIs and 553 young controls was sufficiently powered to replicate the association between rs978739 and the longevity phenotype according to the effect size and frequencies described in the previous paper, under a dominant and additive genetic model. However, no evidence of association between rs978739 and the longevity phenotype was observed according to the additive or dominant model. There are several reasons for the failure of the confirmation of a previous study. However, the differences between the two studies in terms of environment of the population adopted and of the criteria of inclusion have made difficult the replication of the findings.

中文翻译：

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味觉受体、先天免疫和长寿：以 TAS2R16 基因为例

先天免疫利用感觉信号转导的成分，例如苦味和甜味受体。事实上，经验证据表明苦味和甜味受体是上呼吸道感染中抗菌免疫反应的一个组成部分。由于有效的免疫反应在获得长寿中起关键作用，因此在 941 名年龄从 20 岁到来自卡拉布里亚（意大利）的 106 年。人类长寿有许多可能的候选基因，但是在测试的许多基因中，只有 APOE 和 FOXO3 在复制研究中存活下来以关联。因此，有必要在其他研究中验证与长寿相关的基因。因此，我们分析了长寿个体 (LLI) 群体中引用的多态性与来自 Cilento 的另一个意大利群体的对照。该分析是对先前通过全基因组关联研究获得的数据进行的，该研究对来自 Cilento（意大利）的 LLI（年龄范围 90-109 岁）和年轻对照（年龄范围 18-45 岁）群体进行了分析。统计功效计算表明，在显性和加性遗传模型下，由 410 个 LLI 和 553 个年轻对照代表的分析队列具有足够的能力，可以根据前一篇论文中描述的效应大小和频率复制 rs978739 与长寿表型之间的关联。然而，根据加性或显性模型，没有观察到 rs978739 与长寿表型之间存在关联的证据。先前研究的确认失败有几个原因。然而，两项研究在所采用人群的环境和纳入标准方面存在差异，使得研究结果难以复制。