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Identification and Characterization of the Aquaporin Gene aqpA in a Filamentous Fungus Aspergillus nidulans  

Oh, Dong-Soon (Department of Pharmaceutical Engineering, Woosuk University)
Lu, Han-Yan (Department of Pharmaceutical Engineering, Woosuk University)
Han, Kap-Hoon (Department of Pharmaceutical Engineering, Woosuk University)
Publication Information
Korean Journal of Microbiology / v.47, no.4, 2011 , pp. 295-301 More about this Journal
Abstract
Aquaporin is a water channel protein, which is classified as Major Intrinsic Protein (MIP), found in almost all organisms from bacteria to human. To date, more than 200 members of this family were identified. There are two major categories of MIP channels, orthodox aquaporins and aquaglyceroporins, which facilitate the diffusion across biological membranes of water or glycerol and other uncharged compounds, respectively. The full genome sequencing of various fungal species revealed 3 to 5 aquaporins in their genome. Although some functions of aquaporins found in yeast were characterized, however, no functional characteristics were studied so far in filamentous fungi, including Aspergillus sp. In this study, one orthodox aquaporin homolog gene, aqpA, and four aquaglyceroporin homologs, aqpB-E, in a model filamentous fungus Aspergillus nidulans were identified and the function of the aqpA gene was characterized. Knock-out of the aqpA gene didn't show any obvious phenotypic change under the osmotic stress, indicating that the function of the gene does not involved in the osmotic stress response or the function could be redundant. However, the mutant showed antifungal susceptibility resistance phenotype, suggesting that the function of the aqpA gene could be involved in sensing the antifungal substances rather than the osmotic stress response.
Keywords
Aspergillus nidulans; antifungal resistance; aquaglyceroporin; aquaporin; osmotic stress;
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