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Aquaglyceroporins: ancient channels for metalloids

Hiranmoy Bhattacharjee, Rita Mukhopadhyay, Saravanamuthu Thiyagarajan and Barry P Rosen*

Author Affiliations

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Wayne State University, School of Medicine, Detroit, MI 48201, USA

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Journal of Biology 2008, 7:33 doi:10.1186/jbiol91

Published: 7 November 2008

Abstract

The identification of aquaglyceroporins as uptake channels for arsenic and antimony shows how these toxic elements can enter the food chain, and suggests that food plants could be genetically modified to exclude arsenic while still accumulating boron and silicon.