Lecture 11: Aquaporins Flashcards
When were AQPs discovered?
1992
What accounts for 5 litres of water absorption a day?
Na/glucose transporters as each sugar molecule is directly coupled to 260 water molecules
What direction do AQPs transport water in? What rate?
Bidirectional, 3 billion mol/sec
How many isoforms do mammals have and what are the two classes?
13 and AQPs and glyceroaquaporins
What is different about AQP 6 and 8?
6 lets in anions, 8 lets in urea.
What do E.coli have?
One AQP and one glyceroAQP
Explain how frog oocytes were modified with AQPs.
They don’t have AQP but were injected with AQP1 cRNA and transferred to hypotonic solution (no salt) and the frog oocytes swelled and exploded after 3 mins.
What size are monomers, how many TM alpha helices do they have (name them), how many half helices (which ones) and how many connecting loops?
28-30kDa, 6 (M1,2,4-7,8), 2 (M3,7) 5.
How was the tetrameric structure identified?
Freeze fracture
Where re the N and C domains?
Cytoplasm
Does it undergo conformational change? What does this mean?
No, transports water orders of magnitude faster than glucose or ions
What is key to the water selectivity?
M3 and M7
What is at the centre of each monomer?
A 2 nm long water selective channel or pore with a 0.28 nm diameter only slightly larger than water molecule
How does water move through?
One at a time
How is selectivity established in hAQP1?
conserved hydrophilic residue side chains turned towards the inside of the channel
What does the hydrophilic surface consist of?
alpha carbonyl groups from the polypeptide backbone (I191, C189, G188, G190)
What are the NPA motifs and how many are there?
Asn, Pro, Ala. are in the half helices and contain inward facing aspargine polar side chains (N76 and N192)
What are the NPA motifs important for?
hydrophilic surface of the amphipathic pore and are important for preventing proton conduction eg H3O+ so H2O specific.
What limits access to other molecules? Where is this and what is the diameter? How does it act?
Arg195 and His180. At the narrowest segment, 8A. Is a size excluder and electrostatic repulsion.