The transient receptor potential (TRP) superfamily consists of a diverse set of proteins whose primary function is to regulate the plasma membrane permeability of animal cells to a variety of ions. They are among the largest family of ion channels known, with representative members in many species right through from yeast to humans. The first member of the family to be identified, Drosophila melanogaster TRP, was discovered in the analysis of a mutant fly whose photoreceptors failed to maintain a sustained response to a prolonged stimulus of light (Cosens and Manning, 1969; Hardie and Minke, 1992; Montell and Rubin, 1989).
FIG1
Estimates of the numbers of TRP channels in fully sequenced genomes vary depending on the inclusion of outlying but related family numbers. More than 100 TRP sequences are present in current non-redundant database sets, including members from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Dictyostelium discoideum, Caenorhabditis...
