The role of a group III AQP, AQP11 in intracellular organelle homeostasis

AQP11 is a member of a new aquaporin subfamily which includes many aquaporin homologs with low amino acid identities, around 20% of previously identified AQPs. Although these AQPs have unusual NPA sequences, these AQPs have a completely conserved and functionally indispensable cysteine residue downstream of the second NPA box, suggesting that they belong to a specific AQP subfamily, which we propose to name the group III AQPs. On the other hand, the NPA boxes are highly conserved in previous AQP subfamilies : the group I AQPs, original water-selective aquaporin family and the group II AQPs, aquaglyceroporin family. Currently the roles of the group III AQPs are only known with AQP11 as the disruption of intracellularly located AQP11 in mice produced huge vacuoles in the proximal tubule leading to fatal polycystic kidneys at one month old. This review focused on the classification of AQPs based on primary structures to obtain insights into the function and the role of AQPs. With the accumulation of new AQP-like sequences through genome projects, this classification will be useful to predict their functions as each group may have specific characteristics in its function, distribution and regulation.