Functional characterization of two new sugar transporter families within the Major Facilitator Superfamily (MFS)

Our group has almost completely characterized a family of monosaccharide transporters in Arabidopsis (AtSTPs) comprising 14 highly homologous members. For most AtSTPs, we could demonstrate a sink-specific expression and the localisation in the plasmamembrane. Expression in yeast cells showed that most of these transporters accept a broad range of monosaccharide substrates. In addition to the AtSTPs, 6 distinct families of putative sugar transporters can be identified within the Arabidopsis genome. One of these families shows significant homologies to bacterial xylose/H+ symporters, while another family is related to vacuolar transporters and mammalian facilitators. We wish to functionally characterize these two families by investigating the transport properties, the tissue-specific and (sub)cellular localizations as well as the developmental, spatial, and environmental regulation of the individual transporters.

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