Cloning of an Aquaporin 9 Gene Orthologue From the Hagfish (Myxine glutinosa)

Information concerning the first elasmobranch aquaporin water channel was recently published ¹ . Additionally, expressed sequence tag (EST) sequencing efforts have led to the presence of several EST entries in the gene bank. However, despite these sequence data and other reports on aquaporin water channels in teleost fish ² , the presence (and role) of aquaporin water channel genes in more evolutionarily ancient fish lineages such agnathans, remains unexplored. This study utilized the new sequence data that had then recently become available, to identify an orthologue of mammalian aquaporin 9 (AQP9) in the hagfish ( Myxine glutinosa ).