The role of aquaporins in cellular and whole plant water balance
Author
Summary, in English
Aquaporins are water channel proteins belonging to the major intrinsic protein (MIP) superfamily of membrane proteins. More than 150 MIPs have been identified in organisms ranging from bacteria to animals and plants. In plants, aquaporins are present in the plasma membrane and in the vacuolar membrane where they are abundant constituents. Functional studies of aquaporins have hitherto mainly been performed by heterologous expression in Xenopus oocytes. A main issue is now to understand their role in the plant, where they are likely to be important both at the cellular and at the whole plant level. Plants contain a large number of aquaporin isoforms with distinct cell type- and tissue-specific expression patterns. Some of these are constitutively expressed, whereas the expression of others is regulated in response to environmental factors, such as drought and salinity. At the protein level, regulation of water transport activity by phosphorylation has been reported for some aquaporins.
Department/s
Publishing year
2000
Language
English
Pages
324-342
Publication/Series
Biochimica et Biophysica Acta - Biomembranes
Volume
1465
Issue
1-2
Links
Document type
Journal article review
Publisher
Elsevier
Topic
- Biological Sciences
Keywords
- Animals
- Signal Transduction
- Amino Acid Sequence
- Aquaporins/chemistry/genetics/*metabolism
- Biological Transport
- Intracellular Membranes/metabolism
- Cell Membrane/metabolism
- Membrane Proteins/chemistry/metabolism
- Isoelectric Point
- Molecular Sequence Data
- Molecular
- Models
- Molecular Weight
- Phylogeny
- Water-Electrolyte Balance
- Plants/genetics/growth & development/*metabolism
- Plant Components/metabolism
- Protein Isoforms/metabolism
- Plant Proteins/*metabolism
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0005-2736