Progress on the application of aquaporins in Chinese medicine.

Aquaporins are a group of membrane proteins, which are known as the passages of water molecules transforming through the biological membrane lipid bilayer and distributing in almost all of the organs and tissues of living creatures. Aquaporins play important roles in maintaining water balance and internal environment stability. As a new entry point, aquaporins are involved in the researches on water metabolism, physiological regulation and pathological essence in viscera-state more and more widely in recent years. The literature on traditional Chinese medical studies, which related to aquaporins and were published in the last decade, was reviewed and the progress on application of aquaporin in Chinese medicine was summarized in this paper.