Mechanosensitive aquaporins

Marcelo Ozu*, Luciano Galizia, Juan José Alvear-Arias, Miguel Fernández, Agustín Caviglia, Rosario Zimmermann, Florencia Guastaferri, Nicolás Espinoza-Muñoz, Moira Sutka, Lorena Sigaut, Lía Isabel Pietrasanta, Carlos González, Gabriela Amodeo, José Antonio Garate*

*Autor correspondiente de este trabajo

Producción científica: Contribución a una revistaArtículo de revisiónrevisión exhaustiva

2 Citas (Scopus)

Resumen

Cellular systems must deal with mechanical forces to satisfy their physiological functions. In this context, proteins with mechanosensitive properties play a crucial role in sensing and responding to environmental changes. The discovery of aquaporins (AQPs) marked a significant breakthrough in the study of water transport. Their transport capacity and regulation features make them key players in cellular processes. To date, few AQPs have been reported to be mechanosensitive. Like mechanosensitive ion channels, AQPs respond to tension changes in the same range. However, unlike ion channels, the aquaporin’s transport rate decreases as tension increases, and the molecular features of the mechanism are unknown. Nevertheless, some clues from mechanosensitive ion channels shed light on the AQP-membrane interaction. The GxxxG motif may play a critical role in the water permeation process associated with structural features in AQPs. Consequently, a possible gating mechanism triggered by membrane tension changes would involve a conformational change in the cytoplasmic extreme of the single file region of the water pathway, where glycine and histidine residues from loop B play a key role. In view of their transport capacity and their involvement in relevant processes related to mechanical forces, mechanosensitive AQPs are a fundamental piece of the puzzle for understanding cellular responses.

Idioma originalInglés
Páginas (desde-hasta)497-513
Número de páginas17
PublicaciónBiophysical Reviews
Volumen15
N.º4
DOI
EstadoPublicada - 2023

Nota bibliográfica

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics (IUPAB) and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

Áreas temáticas de ASJC Scopus

  • Biofísica
  • Biología estructural
  • Biología molecular

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