Park J H, Saier M H
Department of Biology, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0116, USA.
J Membr Biol. 1996 Oct;153(3):171-80. doi: 10.1007/s002329900120.
The ubiquitous major intrinsic protein (MIP) family includes several transmembrane channel proteins known to exhibit specificity for water and/or neutral solutes. We have identified 84 fully or partially sequenced members of this family, have multiply aligned over 50 representative, divergent, fully sequenced members, have used the resultant multiple alignment to derive current MIP family-specific signature sequences, and have constructed a phylogenetic tree. The tree reveals novel features relevant to the evolutionary history of this protein family. These features plus an evaluation of functional studies lead to the postulates: (i) that all current MIP family proteins derived from two divergent bacterial paralogues, one a glycerol facilitator, the other an aquaporin, and (ii) that most or all current members of the family have retained these or closely related physiological functions.
普遍存在的主要内在蛋白（MIP）家族包括几种跨膜通道蛋白，已知这些蛋白对水和/或中性溶质具有特异性。我们已经鉴定出该家族84个完全或部分测序的成员，对50多个具有代表性、差异较大的完全测序成员进行了多重比对，利用所得的多重比对结果推导出现有的MIP家族特异性特征序列，并构建了系统发育树。该树揭示了与该蛋白家族进化历史相关的新特征。这些特征加上对功能研究的评估得出以下假设：（i）所有现有的MIP家族蛋白都源自两个不同的细菌旁系同源物，一个是甘油转运蛋白，另一个是水通道蛋白；（ii）该家族的大多数或所有现有成员都保留了这些或密切相关的生理功能。
