Interamino Acid Inhibition of Transport in Higher Plants

Data from published experiments were analyzed to determine the number and specificities of amino acid transport channels in cells of higher plants. Each experiment measured the uptake of a labeled amino acid in the presence of unlabeled amino acids, used one at a time, in the incubating medium. The observed interamino acid inhibitions can be accounted for by two transport channels, each with characteristic affinities that were computed from the observed interamino acid inhibitions. The first channel is a general transport system with the following relative affinities for the amino acids: methionine 75, alanine 75, phenylalanine 64, tyrosine 64, leucine 63, cysteine 58, serine 57, glycine 56, tryptophan 54, glutamine 51, threonine 49, valine 44, isoleucine 44, glutamic acid 44, proline 43, histidine 33, lysine 32, asparagine 22, arginine 22, aspartic acid 18. The second channel is a basic amino acid tranport system with relative affinities for arginine, lysine, and histidine of 66, 39, and 21, respectively. The affinities for the other acids in the second channel are lower. Despite considerable diversity in the species, tissues, and solute concentrations employed in the experiments, multiple regression equations (Y = alpha + beta(1)X(1) + betaX(2), in which Y is the observed transport inhibition and X(1) and X(2) are the relative transport affinities of the two channels) account for 50 to 99% of the variance in all but six experiments, five of which employed unusually high solute concentrations.