We received a great and very specific question about Prop versus PTC taste test paper from Stuart, and in researching his question, we found a great resource we wanted to share.

“I recently purchased your PTC Taste Test Paper from Amazon. I previously used PROP paper to determine that I am a supertaster. I have also determined via 23andme that I have the TAS2R38 genetic polymorphisms for supertaster. I was surprised to find that I could only taste a very mild bitterness from your PTC strips. From your experience, are some people more sensitive to PROP than PTC?”

Great question, Stuart! Let’s dig in…

This was a very interesting observation made by Stuart. We are by no means experts in the genetics field, however, we found this article from the University of Delaware to be very informative and helpful.

The article lists many references and has plenty of information to explore if you are interested in this topic. Specific to Stuart’s question, it appears that in general, there is normally agreement between results with PTC and PROP (see the PTC versus PROP section).

Later in the article, however, the author goes into some details (see Molecular genetics section). In this section, he specifically mentions the strong correlation between PTC results and the TAS2R38 gene. At the very end of this section, the author mentions that the correlation between PROP results and TAS8R38 is not nearly as strong. If we read the analysis correctly, there are some examples of PTC non-tasters (AVI/AVI) who are tasters to PROP. This might explain Stuart’s results.

We would love to hear your experiences with results tasting PROP versus PTC taste test papers. Are there any other supertasters out there who have experienced similar results? Post your comments below!