1e4t
From Proteopedia
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SOLUTION STRUCTURE OF THE MOUSE DEFENSIN MBD-7
Overview
Defensins are cationic and cysteine-rich peptides that play a crucial role, in the host defense against microorganisms of many organisms by their, capability to permeabilize bacterial membranes. The low sequence, similarity among the members of the large mammalian beta-defensin family, suggests that their antimicrobial activity is largely independent of their, primary structure. To investigate to what extent these defensins share a, similar fold, the structures of the two human beta-defensins, hBD-1 and, hBD-2, as well as those of two novel murine defensins, termed mBD-7 and, mBD-8, were determined by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. All, four defensins investigated share a striking similarity on the level of, secondary and tertiary structure including the lack of a distinct, hydrophobic core, suggesting that the fold is mainly stabilized by the, presence of three disulfide bonds. In addition to the overall shape of the, molecules, the ratio of solvent-exposed polar and hydrophobic side chains, is also very similar among the four defensins investigated. It is, significant that beta-defensins do not exhibit a common pattern of charged, and hydrophobic residues on the protein surface and that the, beta-defensin-specific fold appears to accommodate a wide range of, different amino acids at most sequence positions. In addition to the, implications for the mode of biological defensin actions, these findings, are of particular interest because beta-defensins have been suggested as, lead compounds for the development of novel peptide antibiotics for the, therapy of infectious diseases.
About this Structure
1E4T is a Single protein structure of sequence from Mus musculus. Full crystallographic information is available from OCA.
Reference
Structure determination of human and murine beta-defensins reveals structural conservation in the absence of significant sequence similarity., Bauer F, Schweimer K, Kluver E, Conejo-Garcia JR, Forssmann WG, Rosch P, Adermann K, Sticht H, Protein Sci. 2001 Dec;10(12):2470-9. PMID:11714914
Page seeded by OCA on Tue Nov 20 13:46:42 2007
