The essential building block in the water membrane technology of Aquaporin A/S is the aquaporin water channel protein.
Aquaporins are crucial for life in all organisms, from bacteria via plants to man. They facilitate rapid, highly selective water transport across the cell membrane, thus allowing the cell to regulate its volume and internal osmotic pressure according to hydrostatic and/or osmotic pressure differences. The special architecture of the aquaporin channel allows only water molecules to pass while all other compounds are rejected. The importance of the aquaporin in human is perhaps most conspicuous in the kidney, where ~150-200 liters of water need to be reabsorbed from the primary urine each day, that is, aquaporin facilitated water transport is invoked when water rapidly must be retrieved from a body fluid.
These channels are so important to life on earth that in 2003 the Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Professor Peter Agre for his discovery of the aquaporin water channel.