The Aquaporin Water Channels

The topic of my talk, the aquaporins, is something that we have been studying in our lab for the last 15 years. It is not something that I anticipated when starting my career. In fact, I am a hematologist, but in science, sometimes what we find is not what we are looking for. A typical middle-aged man, I weigh 75 kg, of which 50 are water. This is something that we all share. Water is the major component of all our cells in all of our tissues. This is also shared with all other life forms, other vertebrates, invertebrates, microorganisms, and plants. Water can be described as the “solvent of life”—without water, there is no life. Multicellular life comes with potential problems. One of these problems is the movement of fluids across biological barriers, and the principal barrier for most of our tissues is the plasma membrane. The aquaporins, which I will describe, are an answer to how water crosses biological membranes, but specific questions still need be defined. I am very pleased to be speaking to the American Thoracic Society because I believe that many of the questions related to fluid movements in lung are still unsettled.