Knepper Mark A, Nielsen Soren
National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Building 10, Room 6N260, 10 Center Drive MSC 1603, Bethesda, MD 20892-1603, USA.
J Am Soc Nephrol. 2004 Apr;15(4):1093-5. doi: 10.1097/01.asn.0000118814.47663.7d.
Peter C. Agre, an American Society of Nephrology member, is the recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the aquaporin water channels. The function of many cells requires that water move rapidly into and out of them. There was only indirect evidence that proteinaceous channels provide this vital activity until Agre and colleagues purified aquaporin-1 from human erythrocytes and reported its cDNA sequence. They proved that aquaporin-1 is a specific water channel by cRNA expression studies in Xenopus oocytes and by functional reconstitution of transport activity in liposomes after the incorporation of the purified protein. These findings sparked a veritable explosion of work that affects several long-standing areas of investigation such as the biophysics of water permeation across cell membranes, the structural biology of integral membrane proteins, the physiology of fluid transport in the kidney and other organs, and the pathophysiological basis of inherited and acquired disorders of water balance. Agre's discovery of the first water channel has spurred a revolution in animal and plant physiology and in medicine.
彼得·C·阿格雷是美国肾脏病学会会员，因发现水通道蛋白水通道而获得2003年诺贝尔化学奖。许多细胞的功能要求水能够快速进出细胞。在阿格雷及其同事从人红细胞中纯化出水通道蛋白-1并报道其cDNA序列之前，仅有间接证据表明蛋白质通道具有这种重要功能。他们通过非洲爪蟾卵母细胞中的cRNA表达研究以及在脂质体中掺入纯化蛋白后对转运活性进行功能重建，证明了水通道蛋白-1是一种特异性水通道。这些发现引发了一场名副其实的研究热潮，涉及多个长期研究领域，如细胞膜水渗透的生物物理学、整合膜蛋白的结构生物学、肾脏及其他器官中液体转运的生理学以及遗传性和获得性水平衡紊乱的病理生理学基础。阿格雷首次发现水通道引发了动物和植物生理学以及医学领域的一场革命。
