Courtesy of Bing Jap
Close-up view of the AQP1 water channel derived from crystal structure. Residues defining this region are depicted in ball and stick (Grey, carbon; blue, nitrogen; red, oxygen; yellow, sulfur). The water molecule located just below the constriction region is shown. Histidine protrudes into the pore and is a key residue for establishing water selectivity.
For some, the road to discovery is a four-lane highway lined with sign-posts warning what lies ahead. For Peter Agre, the Johns Hopkins University researcher who accepted the 2003 Nobel Prize for chemistry last month, it was more like "driving out on a gravel road in a remote part of western Maryland and suddenly coming to a large city" – hard to miss and yet completely unexpected. Since Agre and his group cloned aquaporin 1 (AQP1) in 1992, hundreds of these previously unknown channels have been discovered in plants, animals, and lower ...
