Establishment of Protein's Role in Ammonia Transport May Open Doors for Acid-Base Balance, Detoxification Studies

Date: November 23, 2004

Mouse Models Provided by The Jackson Laboratory

Bar Harbor, Maine - A paper published in the November 23 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a team from the French Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris provides insight into the functional role of Rhesus proteins, clinically significant to the process of matching donor blood types to transfusion recipients.

Dr. Jean-Pierre Cartron and his colleagues, including Jackson Laboratory researcher Connie Birkenmeier who provided Dr. Cartron's team with mouse models of hemolytic anemia, show that ammonia undergoes facilitated movement across the red blood cell membrane rather than movement by simple diffusion as previously thought. They have identified a critical role for the Rhesus-associated glycoprotein (RhAG) in this process.

These findings indicate that RhAG plays an important role in maintaining pH balance in red blood cells and provide a basis for looking at related proteins in other cell types, such as kidney and liver, where such proteins may play an integral role in detoxification and systemic acid-base balance. These findings also point to RhAG as a potential example of a gas channel in mammalian cells.

The independent, nonprofit Jackson Laboratory, founded in 1929, is the world's largest mammalian genetics research facility. The Laboratory is also the source of more than 2,800 stocks and strains of genetically defined mice, the home of the Mouse Genome Database and many other publicly available information resources, and an international hub for scientific courses, conferences, training and education.

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Ripoche P, Bertrand O, Gane P, Birkenmeier C, Colin Y, and Cartron J-P: Human Rhesus-associated glycoprotein mediates facilitated transport of NH3 into red blood cells. PNAS, November 23, 2004.

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