Fig. 1. Amino acid sequence analysis of AeaEAAT. (A) Amino acid (aa) sequence alignment of AeaEAAT and other insect glutamate transporters cloned and characterized to date. The deduced aa sequence of AeaEAAT gave a 481-aa residue protein with six clear N-terminal regions of hydrophobicity (overlined), possibly correlating to transmembrane domains, having one putative N-linked glycosylation site (asterisk). (B) Sequence distances, derived from ClustalW based alignment, of the insect and human EAAT superfamily, including the ASC transporters. Of the functionally characterized insect EAATs, AeaEAAT has most identity to DipEAAT (55.3%), and amongst the human counterparts has highest identity to hEAAT3 (47%). Included are putative EAATs from the completed genome of Anopheles gambiae (GenBank accession numbers: AAB01008807; AAB01008797, AAB01008964), the first of which has 74.9% identity to AeaEAAT. AeaEAAT, Aedes aegypti; AmEAAT, Apis mellifera; DipEAAT, Diploptera punctata; dEAAT1 and dEAAT2, Drosophila melanogaster; TrnEAAT, Trichoplusia ni; hEAAT1-5, human; hASCT, human alanine serine cysteine transporter.