Department of Pediatric Laboratory, Wuxi Children's Hospital, Wuxi, Jiangsu 214023, P.R. China.
Department of Pediatric Respiratory Medicine, Wuxi Children's Hospital, Wuxi, Jiangsu 214023, P.R. China.
Int J Mol Med. 2018 Dec;42(6):3551-3561. doi: 10.3892/ijmm.2018.3877. Epub 2018 Sep 13.
Aquaporins (AQPs), or water channel proteins, are highly conserved across species. These transmembrane proteins promote water and solute transport across cell membranes. No AQP‑related proteins have been identified in mites to date. The present study used transcriptomics (RNA‑sequencing) to identify potential AQPs in the mite species Blomia tropicalis. Molecular cloning techniques were then used to obtain the full‑length gene sequences encoding these AQP family members, and bioinformatics analyses were used to categorize them based on similarity to AQPs in other species. This approach led to the identification of 5 putative AQP‑coding sequences, known as BlotAQP1‑5 (GenBank accession numbers: KX655540, KX655541, KX655542, KX655543 and KX655544, respectively), which were indexed into all three subgroups, i.e., AQPs, aquaglyceroporins and superAQPs. To the best of our knowledge, these represent the first known AQPs in any mite species. Further studies are required to investigate their functional roles in water transport and their potential as drug targets.
水通道蛋白（AQP），又称水分子通道蛋白，在物种间高度保守。这些跨膜蛋白促进水和溶质穿过细胞膜的运输。迄今为止，尚未在螨虫中鉴定出与 AQP 相关的蛋白质。本研究使用转录组学（RNA 测序）来鉴定热带螨种中的潜在 AQP。然后使用分子克隆技术获得编码这些 AQP 家族成员的全长基因序列，并使用生物信息学分析根据与其他物种 AQP 的相似性对其进行分类。这种方法导致了 5 种假定的 AQP 编码序列的鉴定，分别称为 BlotAQP1-5（GenBank 登录号：KX655540、KX655541、KX655542、KX655543 和 KX655544），它们被归入所有三个亚组，即 AQP、aquaglyceroporins 和 superAQPs。据我们所知，这是在任何螨虫物种中首次发现的 AQP。需要进一步的研究来研究它们在水运输中的功能作用及其作为药物靶点的潜力。
