Suppresses strongly the sweet taste responses in the rat with high specificity to sucrose, glucose, glycine, and saccharin. This effect is reversible, but complete recovery of the suppressed responses required at least 3h. Gurmarin showed no effect or only a very weak effect on the sweet taste sensation in humans. The presence of a 'disulfide through disulfide knot' structurally defines this protein as a knottin.