HBD-1 - A NOVEL BETA-DEFENSIN FROM HUMAN PLASMA

We report the isolation and characterization of a novel peptide with s ignificant sequence homology to beta-defensins from human blood filtra te. The human beta-defensin-1 (hBD-1) is a short basic peptide of 36 a mino acid residues, It contains six cysteines forming three intramolec ular disulfide bonds. The molecular mass of hBD-1 is 3928.6 Da. Clonin g of the specific cDNA confirmed the amino acid sequence of the native peptide, hBD-1 shares the nine conserved amino acids characteristic f or beta-defensins from respiratory epithelial cells and neutrophils of cattle and chicken leukocytes. hBD-1 is present in nanomolar concentr ation in human plasma.