title: Defensins' offensive play: exploiting a viral achilles' heel.
abstract: Vertebrates rely on antimicrobial peptides as a front-line defense against invading pathogens. Certain cationic antimicrobial peptides, such as human alpha-defensins, have traditionally been thought to destroy invading microbes by disrupting their lipid membranes. In this issue of Cell Host & Microbe, Smith and Nemerow reveal that alpha-defensins can inactivate adenoviruses, which lack lipid membranes, through direct binding of the defensin to the virus's naked protein shell.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Cellular Oncology, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD 20892-4263, USA. buckc@nih.gov
authors.forename: Christopher B
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Buck
mesh_terms: D000256:Adenoviridae / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000378:metabolism / Q000472:pathogenicity*; D000890:Anti-Infective Agents / Q000378:metabolism / Q000494:pharmacology*; D002213:Capsid / Q000378:metabolism*; D006801:Humans; D023084:alpha-Defensins / Q000378:metabolism / Q000494:pharmacology*
chemical_list: D000890:Anti-Infective Agents; C500225:DEFA5 protein, human; D023084:alpha-Defensins; C406413:human neutrophil peptide 1