Nucleic Acids Research, 2012, Vol. 40, Database issue D367 Figure 3. Structure-based sequence alignment for a selected set of MIPs. This alignment is always produced with the six high-resolution MIP structures and their PDB IDs are also shown. This alignment is produced for the six transmembrane segments and the two functionally important loops B and E. The residues forming the ar/R selectivity ﬁlter are shown in the dark brown background. Seventeen positions previously identiﬁed to occur in the helix–helix interface (16) are highly group conserved when small and weakly polar residues are considered together as a group. They are displayed in cyan background. the users will have the option to upload the sequences in the future version. Ultimately, our software will follow a pipeline procedure that will take an MIP sequence to series of steps which will include extracting the sequence features, building a homology model, identifying the se- lectivity ﬁlter residues, generating the HOLE radius proﬁle and a possible prediction of the solutes that are likely to be transported. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We thank Vivek Modi for his help and all our lab members for the useful input. A.B.G. and R.K.V. would like to thank CSIR for a senior research fellowship. FUNDING The Department of Biotechnology, Government of India (BT/HRD/34/17/2008, partial); CSIR (senior research fellowship to A.B.G. and R.K.V.). Funding for open access charge: Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Conﬂict of interest statement. None declared. REFERENCES 1. Benga,G. (2009) Water channel proteins (later called aquaporins) and relatives: past, present and future. IUBMB Life, 61, 112–133. 2. Danielson,J.A.H. and Johanson,U. (2010) Phylogeny of major intrinsic proteins. In: Jahn,T.P. and Bienert,G.P. (eds), MIPs and Their Role in the Exchange of Metalloids, Vol. 679. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, pp. 19–32. 3. Hachez,C. and Chaumont,F. (2010) Aquaporins: A family of highly regulated multifunctional channels. In: Jahn,T.P. and Bienert,G.P. (eds), MIPs and their Role in the Exchange of Metalloids, Vol. 679. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, pp. 1–18. 4. Wu,B. and Beitz,E. (2007) Aquaporins with selectivity for unconventional permeants. Cell. Mol. Life Sci., 64, 2413–2421. 5. Bienert,G.P., Bienert,M.D., Jahn,T.P., Boutry,M. and Chaumont,F. (2011) Solanaceae XIPs are plasma membrane