A novel eukaryotic Na+ methionine selective symporter is essential for mosquito development.

AeNAT5 (NCBI, ABZ81822), an orphan member of the insect-specific Nutrient Amino acid Transporter subfamily of SoLute Carrier family 6 (NAT-SLC6) and the first representative of a novel eukaryotic methionine-selective transport system (M), was cloned from cDNA of the vector mosquito, Aedes aegypti. It has orphan orthologs throughout several mosquito genomes, but not in Drosophila or outside Diptera. It shows the highest apparent affinity to L-Met (K(0.