Usage Examples







The number of species in BitterDB increased to 66, compared to 4 in 2019. The species now include human, mouse, chicken, turkey, cat, platypus, echidna, elephant, opossum, quoll, tasmanian devil, wallaby, koala, dog, vampire bat, frog, shark, stingray, blind mole rat. Additionally, “bird” (other than chicken and turkey), “fish” and “primate” are presented as groups that include receptors belonging to closely related species. For example, the primate group contains 32 different species such as chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), macaque (Macaca mulatta), monkey (Aotus azarae) etc. The BitterDB interface has been updated to support searching and browsing of the selected organism or species group.

By default, BitterDB searches all species.

In the top right corner of the menu, you’ll find a species filter drop-down (Organism: All). This allows you to narrow your search to a specific organism. For example, selecting "Dog" from the list will restrict all search options to compounds and receptors relevant to dogs.

To see this in action, select “Dog” in Organism, then go to the Browse -> Compounds tab to view all bitter compounds for dogs. Similarly, you can explore dog-specific receptors in the Browse -> Receptors section.



If you want to find receptors similar to a specific human receptor, such as T2R16, BitterDB offers tools to help you compare across species.

When searching across all species, you will find closely related sequences to the query receptor though not necessarily official orthologs.

The BitterDB Cross-species Alignment tool allows you to explore a Multiple Sequence Alignment of all sequences present in the BitterDB that share at least 50% sequence identity to the query human receptor.

To use this feature:

  1. Go to the Alignments page.

  2. Scroll down to the Human Bitter Receptors Cross-Species Alignments section.

  3. In the drop-down menu, select the receptor of interest (e.g., hTAS2R16). This Multiple Sequence Alignment contains receptors with at least 50% sequence identity to the selected receptor, including non-orthologous sequences.

  4. You can also use the visualization options under Vis. Elements to explore the alignment further, such as displaying a sequence logo or conservation weights.

  5. Click on a receptor name to view its dedicated receptor page for additional information.



If you'd like to explore and download all ligands associated with a specific receptor, BitterDB makes it easy to do so.
First, navigate to the receptor's page:

  1. Use the Browse -> Receptors page to explore and select your target receptor. You can apply the Organism filter to narrow your search to relevant species.

  2. Alternatively, use the Search -> Receptors page to find a specific receptor by name.

Once you select a receptor, you'll be redirected to its dedicated page, where you'll find a list of all known ligands for that receptor. You can:
- Select specific ligands and use the Download SDF option to download them as an SDF file.
- Or, simply press Download All to download all known ligands for the receptor at once.