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. 2021 Jan;595(1):41-57.
doi: 10.1002/1873-3468.13944. Epub 2020 Oct 17.

Voltage-gating of aquaporins, a putative conserved safety mechanism during ionic stresses

Robin Mom  1 , Beatriz Muries  1 , Pierrick Benoit  1 , Julien Robert-Paganin  2 , Stéphane Réty  3 , Jean-Stéphane Venisse  1 , Agilio Padua  4 , Philippe Label  1 , Daniel Auguin  5
Affiliations

Voltage-gating of aquaporins, a putative conserved safety mechanism during ionic stresses

Robin Mom et al. FEBS Lett. 2021 Jan.

Abstract

Aquaporins are transmembrane water channels found in almost every living organism. Numerous studies have brought a good understanding of both water transport through their pores and the regulations taking place at the molecular level, but subtleties remain to be clarified. Recently, a voltage-related gating mechanism involving the conserved arginine of the channel's main constriction was captured for human aquaporins through molecular dynamics studies. With a similar approach, we show that this voltage-gating could be conserved among this family and that the underlying mechanism could explain part of plant AQPs diversity when contextualized to high ionic concentrations provoked by drought. Finally, we identified residues as adaptive traits which constitute good targets for drought resistance plant breeding research.

Keywords: drought stress; gating; membrane permeability; molecular dynamics; water channel.

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References

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