In this brief review, we have chosen to highlight recent findings pertaining to taste cell biology and renewal in rodent models, primarily in mice.  In particular, we focus on exciting new data addressing both molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate this key sensory system. While we do provide a brief overview of pertinent background here, we also refer our readers to several other excellent reviews, which thoroughly address other important aspects of taste biology including transduction (Breslin and Huang, 2006; Breslin and Spector, 2008; Roper, 2007), development (Krimm, 2007), and genetics (Boughter and Bachmanov, 2007).  Recently, one of us published a systematic review of taste cell lineage and renewal (Miura et al., 2006), thus our current review serves to update several topics covered in this last publication.