Figure 1.

Multiple sequence alignment of human β-defensin proteins. The amino acid sequences were predicted from genomic sequence (Table 1). The chromosomal location of each gene is indicated, except where mapping was ambiguous (A). The sequences were aligned as described in Materials and Methods followed by minor manual manipulations to maximize sequence alignment and clustering of genes by chromosome. We classified β-defensin genes as known (K), if evidence exists that they are transcribed and that their protein product demonstrates antimicrobial activity; related (R), if evidence exists that they are transcribed but their protein product has not been tested for antimicrobial activity; predicted (P), if no evidence exists that they are transcribed; and pseudogenes (S), if the DNA sequence is highly similar to a β-defensin gene, but the predicted amino acid sequence lacks an ORF across the six-cysteine motif. The consensus sequence shows cysteine residues (yellow highlight), positively charged residues (blue +) and other residues (red) if they are represented in greater than 50% of all predicted β-defensin proteins.