title: Bioinformatic and molecular characterization of beta-defensins-like peptides isolated from the green lizard Anolis carolinensis.
abstract: The high resistance of lizards to infections indicates that anti-microbial peptides may be involved. Through the analysis of the green lizard (Anolis carolinensis) genome and the expressed sequence tag (EST) libraries 32 beta-defensin-like-peptides have been identified. The level of expression of some of these genes in different tissues has been determined by semi-quantitative RT-PCR. Gene expression and structure analysis suggest the presence of alternative splicing mechanisms, with a number of exons ranging from two to four, similar to that for beta-defensins genes in mammals. Lizard beta-defensin-like peptides present the characteristic cysteine-motif identified in mammalian and avian beta-defensins. Phylogenetic analysis indicates that some lizard beta-defensins-like peptides are related to crotamine and crotamin-like peptides of snakes and lizards suggesting that beta-defensins and venomous peptides have a common ancestor gene.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, via U. Bassi 58/B, University of Padova, 25131 Padova, Italy. luisa.dallavalle@unipd.it
authors.forename: Luisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dalla Valle
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Benato
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Maistro
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Quinzani
authors.forename: Lorenzo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Alibardi
mesh_terms: D017398:Alternative Splicing; D020816:Amino Acid Motifs / Q000235:genetics; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D019295:Computational Biology; D003435:Crotalid Venoms / Q000235:genetics*; D005091:Exons / Q000235:genetics; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D016678:Genome; D007113:Immunity, Innate; D008116:Lizards; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D012911:Snakes; D023083:beta-Defensins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D003435:Crotalid Venoms; D023083:beta-Defensins; C010563:crotamine