Life Sciences Commons^™

Phylogenetic Relationships Within Cation Transporter Families Of Arabidopsis, Pascal Mäser, Sébastien Thomine, Julian I. Schroeder, John M. Ward, Kendal Hirschi, Heven Sze, Ina N. Talke, Anna Amtmann, Frans J.M. Maathuis, Dale Sanders, Jeff F. Harper, Jason Tchieu, Michael Gribskov, Michael W. Persans, David E. Salt, Sun A. Kim, Mary Lou Guerinot

Dartmouth Scholarship

Uptake and translocation of cationic nutrients play essential roles in physiological processes including plant growth, nutrition, signal transduction, and development. Approximately 5% of the Arabidopsis genome appears to encode membrane transport proteins. These proteins are classified in 46 unique families containing approximately 880 members. In addition, several hundred putative transporters have not yet been assigned to families. In this paper, we have analyzed the phylogenetic relationships of over 150 cation transport proteins. This analysis has focused on cation transporter gene families for which initial characterizations have been achieved for individual members, including potassium transporters and channels, sodium transporters, calcium antiporters, …