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The Evolutionary History and Tissue Mapping of Amino Acid Transporters Belonging to Solute Carrier Families SLC32, SLC36, and SLC38

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Abstract

Members of the solute carrier families (SLC) 32, 36, and 38, together also designated the β-group of SLCs, are known to transport neutral amino acids. In this paper, we show that these three families were present before the split of the animal lineage and that they are likely to share a common decent. We also show that the APF transporters found in plants are most likely homologous to the mammalian β-group, suggesting that this type of transporters arouse early in the evolution of eukaryotes. We performed detailed tissue expression analysis of all the members of the β-group in rat and found several examples of highly specific expression patterns, with SLC38A7 being exclusively found in liver, SLC38A5 in blood, and SLC38A4 in muscle and liver. Moreover, we found that SLC38A10 is expressed in several endocrine organs. We also found that SLC38A1 is highly up regulated in the cortex from rats treated with diazepam and that SLC38A2 is significantly down regulated in the same tissue. In addition, we performed a detailed expression analysis of SLC38A1 and SLC38A6 in mouse brain using in situ hybridization, which showed that both these transporters are widely expressed in the brain.

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Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Dr. Helgi B. Schiöth for the valuable discussion during the course of the project. We would also like to thank Maria Hägglund for help with in situ hybridizations and Linnea Holmén for the preparation of Supplementary Fig. 1. R.F. was supported by the Swedish Brain Foundation (Hjärnfonden). E.R. was supported by the Swedish Brain Foundation (Hjärnfonden). The studies were supported by AFA, Svenska Läkaresällskapet, Lars Hiertas Foundation, O.E. och Edla Johanssons Foundation, Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, Längmanska Kulturfonden, the Magnus Bergvall Foundation, and Åhlens Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neuroscience, Functional Pharmacology, Uppsala University, BMC, P.O. Box 593, 751 24, Uppsala, Sweden

    Björn E. Sundberg, Elin Wååg, Josefin A. Jacobsson, Olga Stephansson, Johan Alsiö & Robert Fredriksson

  2. Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Latvia, 1A Sarlotes St. LV-1001, Riga, Infectology Centre of Latvia, 3, Linezera St., 1006, Riga, Latvia

    Juris Rumaks, Simons Svirskis & Vija Klusa

  3. Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences, Division of Pharmacology, Uppsala University, P.O. Box 591, 751 24, Uppsala, Sweden

    Erika Roman

  4. Department of Neuroscience, Developmental Neuroscience, Uppsala University, BMC, P.O. Box 587, Uppsala, 751 23, Sweden

    Ted Ebendal

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  1. Björn E. Sundberg
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Correspondence to Robert Fredriksson.

Electronic Supplementary Material

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Supplementary data file 1

Primer sequences used for the quantitative real-time PCR (DOC 27 kb)

Supplementary data file 2

Amino acid sequences of the sequences used for the phylogenetic tree in Fig. 2 (DOC 78 kb)

Supplementary Figure 1

Schematic description of the Bregma coordinates for the matrix-dissected sections I–VII used in the rat tissue panel (GIF 28 kb)

High resolution image file (TIF 303 kb)

Supplementary Figure 2

Amino acid sequence alignment of the known human SLC32, SLC36, and SLC38 members made using MEGAlign from the Lasergene package (DNASTAR). The N- and C-termini were removed, as well as two long insertions in SLC38A4 and SLC38A9, indicated by dots. Gray boxes mark motifs that are 75% conserved, and black lines mark previously described TM regions (Boll et al. 2004; Mackenzie and Erickson 2004). White boxes mark regions conserved between the three families in the β-group (GIF 469 kb)

High resolution image file (TIF 4193 kb)

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Sundberg, B.E., Wååg, E., Jacobsson, J.A. et al. The Evolutionary History and Tissue Mapping of Amino Acid Transporters Belonging to Solute Carrier Families SLC32, SLC36, and SLC38. J Mol Neurosci 35, 179–193 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12031-008-9046-x

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