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Encyclopedia of Biophysics pp 1–8Cite as

Membrane Transport Proteins: The Amino Acid-Polyamine-Organocation (APC) Superfamily

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Definition

The proteins listed below belong to the amino acid-polyamine-organocation (APC) superfamily as defined by Wong et al. (2012) and Vastermark and Saier (2014). Structurally, this superfamily can be divided into two groups: the LeuT superfamily (Krishnamurthy et al. 2009), also known as the five-helix inverted repeat (5HIR) transporter superfamily (Adelman et al. 2011), and transporters with a seven-helix inverted repeat. These latter transporters are more distantly related.

Introduction

The general transport reactions of this superfamily (Fig. 1) can be represented as follows:

  • Substrate (out) + nH+ (out) → Substrate (in) + nH+ (in)

  • Substrate (out) + nNa+ (out) → Substrate (in) + nNa+ (in)

  • Substrate-1 (out) + Substrate-2 (in) → Substrate-1 (in) + Substrate-2 (out)

  • Substrate-(out) ↔ Substrate-(in)

Fig. 1
figure 1

Phylogenetic tree of the APC superfamily Superfamily members have been selectively grouped into transporter classification (TC) subfamilies. The TC number is shown in brackets....

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Alexander D. Cameron

  2. Institute of Molecular Biology and Biophysics ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Scott M. Jackson

  3. Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology and School of BioMedical Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Antonio N. Calabrese & Peter J. F. Henderson

  4. Center for Biological Physics and Department of Physics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Oliver Beckstein

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  1. Alexander D. Cameron
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  2. Scott M. Jackson
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  3. Antonio N. Calabrese
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  4. Oliver Beckstein
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  5. Peter J. F. Henderson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter J. F. Henderson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University Leicester MRC Centre, Leicester, UK

    Gordon Roberts

  2. Dept Biochemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Anthony Watts

Section Editor information

  1. Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology and School of BioMedical Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Peter J. F. Henderson

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Cameron, A.D., Jackson, S.M., Calabrese, A.N., Beckstein, O., Henderson, P.J.F. (2019). Membrane Transport Proteins: The Amino Acid-Polyamine-Organocation (APC) Superfamily. In: Roberts, G., Watts, A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Biophysics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35943-9_772-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35943-9_772-1

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