title: Structural characterization of plant defensin protein superfamily.
abstract: Plant defensins represent a major innate immune protein superfamily with strong inhibitory effects on infectious diseases of humans, antifungal/antibacterial activities, proteinase and insect amylase inhibitory activities. They are generally defined by their conserved cysteine scaffold with α-helix and triple strand anti parallel β-sheet connected to the scaffold. With the genome of more plant species being fully sequenced, significant information about newly sequenced defensin proteins has been revealed. In this paper, we identify members of defensin protein families across plant species and use protein-modeling-based structural reconstitution to reveal specific three dimensional hidden features of plant defensins mediating defense responses and other interesting biological activities in plants. Our data revealed that plant defensins are structurally similar to their insect counterparts despite the low amino acid sequence similarity between these two organisms. The molecular and structural relationship among plant defensins and defensins from other species is discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Rutgers University, 315 Penn St., Camden, NJ 08102, USA.
authors.forename: Emma W
authors.initials: EW
authors.lastname: Gachomo
authors.forename: Jose C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Jimenez-Lopez
authors.forename: Adéchola Pierre Polycarpe
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Kayodé
authors.forename: Lamine
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Baba-Moussa
authors.forename: Simeon O
authors.initials: SO
authors.lastname: Kotchoni
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000890:Anti-Infective Agents / Q000737:chemistry; D017124:Conserved Sequence / Q000235:genetics; D023082:Defensins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D005810:Multigene Family; D010802:Phylogeny; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D010944:Plants / Q000378:metabolism*; D017433:Protein Structure, Secondary; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid
chemical_list: D000890:Anti-Infective Agents; D023082:Defensins; D010940:Plant Proteins