defensin
Sign in to saveAlso known as defensins
Defensins are small cysteine-rich cationic proteins across cellular life, including vertebrate and invertebrate animals, plants, and fungi. They are host defense peptides, with members displaying either direct antimicrobial activity, immune signaling activities, or both. They are variously active against bacteria, fungi and many enveloped and nonenveloped viruses. They are typically 18-45 amino acids in length, with three or four highly conserved disulphide bonds.
Key facts
- Protein family.Symbol
- Defensin
- Protein family.Name
- Defensin
- Protein family.image
- Defensin examples.png
- Protein family.caption
- Example defensins with alpha helix in red, beta strands in blue, disulphide bonds in yellow ()
- Protein family.Pfam_clan
- CL0075
- Protein family.OPM family
- 54
- Protein family.OPM protein
- 6cs9
via Wikipedia infobox
Research
10,369 papers- Human beta-defensin-2.The international journal of biochemistry & cell biology · 1999
- Defensin-lipid interactions in membrane targeting: mechanisms of action and opportunities for the development of antimicrobial and anticancer therapeutics.Biochemical Society transactions · 2022
- Expanding the insect defensin landscape.Structure (London, England : 1993) · 2024
- Defensin-barbed innate immunity: clinical associations in the pediatric population.Pediatrics · 2010
- Defensin deficiency, intestinal microbes, and the clinical phenotypes of Crohn's disease.Journal of leukocyte biology · 2005
via PubMed
~11 min read
Encyclopedic overview
15 sectionsContents
- Varieties
- Trans-defensins
- Cis-defensins
- Related defensin-like proteins
- Toxins
- Signalling
- Enzyme inhibitors
- Function
- Pathology
- Applications
- Defensins
- Defensin-mimetics
- See also
- References
- External links
Defensins are small cysteine-rich cationic proteins across cellular life, including vertebrate and invertebrate animals, plants, and fungi. They are host defense peptides, with members displaying either direct antimicrobial activity, immune signaling activities, or both. They are variously active against bacteria, fungi and many enveloped and nonenveloped viruses. They are typically 18-45 amino acids in length, with three or four highly conserved disulphide bonds.
In animals, they are produced by cells of the innate immune system and epithelial cells, whereas in plants and fungi they are produced by a wide variety of tissues. An organism usually produces many different defensins, some of which are stored inside the cells (e.g. in neutrophil granulocytes to kill phagocytosed bacteria), and others are secreted into the extracellular medium. For those that directly kill microbes, their mechanism of action varies from disruption of the microbial cell membrane to metabolic disruption.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “defensin” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.