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Silicon Transporters

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Metalloproteins

Synonyms

Membrane proteins with transport activity for silicic acid; Silicic acid transporters in plants

Definition

Plants accumulate silicon in the tissues for enhancing tolerance to various stresses. Different transporters are involved in the uptake, xylem loading, and distribution of silicon, including influx transporter and efflux transporter. Influx transporter belongs to a Nod26-like major intrinsic protein (NIP) subfamily of aquaporin-like proteins, while efflux transporter is a member of putative anion transporters.

Introduction

Silicon (Si) is the second most abundant element after oxygen in the Earth’s crust. It is essential for animals and diatoms, but has not been recognized as an essential element for plant growth, because there is no evidence showing that Si is involved in the metabolism, which is required for the essentiality in higher plants (Epstein 1999; Ma and Takahashi 2002; Ma et al. 2011). However, beneficial effects of Si have been observed in a wide range of...

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References

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Correspondence to Jian Feng Ma .

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Ma, J.F. (2013). Silicon Transporters. In: Kretsinger, R.H., Uversky, V.N., Permyakov, E.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Metalloproteins. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1533-6_494

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