Objective
Recently a family of presently more than 100 membrane channel proteins has been described: the Major Intrinsic Protein or MIP family. MIP channels are crucial for water and/or solute transport across biological membranes in humans, animals, plants, fungi and bacteria.
Water channels of the MIP family - termed aquaporins - are essential for the regulation of human water balance. Dysregulation or dysfunction of aquaporins is associated with kidney, eye, heart, and liver diseases, and aquaporins are potentially important targets for pharmacological and cosmeceutical application. In plants more than 20 aquaporins have been identified in a single species. They are believed to be crucial for plant water homeostasis and hence are potential targets for the genetic engineering of crop tolerance to limited water availability. Most microbial MIP channels transport small polyols in nutrition and osmoregulation and they constitute a major potential for the engineering of metabolism towards the production of useful chemicals from renewable resources. European laboratories, incorporated in this application, have contributed to pioneering research into MIP channel proteins.
In this programme we bring together leading European research and industrial laboratories, to work towards the understanding of the structure-function relationship and the physiological role of MIP channels in humans, animals, plants and micro-organisms. The objective is to establish the scientific basis to unlock the full exploitation potential of this unique protein family. To achieve this we will:
- Develop and optimise techniques for the production, purification and structure-function analysis of membrane proteins, especially MIP channels. - Determine the molecular structure of six MIP channels in order to define the determinants of transport specificity and regulation.
- Define the physiological and the pathophysiological role of specific human and/or animal aquaporin water channels which are of potential pharmacologica relevance.
- Develop and test strategies for the design of and screening for inhibitors as potential novel pharmaceuticals (e.g. diuretics) and cosmeceuticals (e.g. antiperspirants ).
- Define the physiological role of plant aquaporin water channels to identify them as targets for the genetic engineering of drought tolerance. - Engineer model plants and crops for improved stress tolerance by altering MIP channel function or expression.
- Isolate and characterise MIP channels from micro-organisms with a potential to transport polyols different from glycerol, such as xylitol. - Develop and test strategies to use naturally occurring or genetically optimised MlPs in the engineering of microbial metabolism towards the production of useful chemicals such as glycerol or xylitol.
The exploitation potential of MIP channels in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, agro and fermentation industries covers markets of billions of ECUs at the community level alone. Specific products based on MIP channel function could therefore significantly improve world-wide competitiveness of the industries involved in this project and beyond. In conclusion, the achievements of this project are expected to have a major impact on future industry-oriented research in MIP channel function and will lead to further transnational collaborative research and product development at the Community level.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologybacteriology
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologygenetic engineering
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologymycology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculeslipids
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
405 30 Göteborg
Sweden