Description
Defensins are a family of microbicidal and cytotoxic peptidesthought to be involved in host defense. They are abundant in the granules ofneutrophils and also found in the epithelia of mucosal surfaces such as thoseof the intestine, respiratory tract, urinary tract, and vagina. Members of thedefensin family are highly similar in protein sequence and distinguished by aconserved cysteine motif. The protein encoded by this gene, defensin, alpha1, is found in the microbicidal granules of neutrophils and likely plays arole in phagocyte-mediated host defense. Several alpha defensin genes areclustered on chromosome 8. This gene differs from defensin, alpha 3 by onlyone amino acid. This gene and the gene encoding defensin, alpha 3 are bothsubject to copy number variation