The progress on mammalian superaquaporin (sAQP), AQP11 and AQP12, in the past seven years is brought up to date from the previous review. This subfamily is separated because of the very low homology with other AQP subfamilies and it is present only in multicellular organisms excluding fungi and plants. Its unique intracellular localization, specifically in the ER has made its functional studies challenging, but it may function as glyceroporin, aquaporin and peroxiporin, H2O2 transporter. Knowledge on AQP11 has been expanded by tissue specific conditional knockout mice and by the identification of a SNP associated with kidney diseases. Moreover, the functional identification of AQP11 as a peroxiporin has expanded the role of AQP11 to the regulation of intracellular H2O2 homeostasis to prevent ER stress, which awaits further in vivo studies. As kidney-specific AQP11 knockout of developed kidney has produced little phenotype, AQP11 is critical for kidney development but its physiological significance remains to be clarified. On the other hand, little has been known on pancreas-specific AQP12. To move this field forward, the results of sAQP in lower animals will be necessary to obtain the insights into the role of mammalian sAQP, which hopefully will lead to the discovery of therapeutic targets.
Keywords: Aquaporin; Intracellular vacuole; Peroxiporin; Polycystic kidney; Superaquaporin.
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