MBE Advance Access originally published online on February 12, 2004
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Mol. Biol. Evol. 21(5):819-827. 2004
DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msh084
© 2004 by the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. ISSN: 0737-4038
Evidence of Positively Selected Sites in Mammalian 
-Defensins
* Education and Research Centre, St. Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
Department of Medicine, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Department of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Biology Department, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland
|| Conway Institute, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
E-mail address: cliona.ofarrelly{at}ucd.ie.
-Defensins are a family of mammalian antimicrobial peptides that exhibit variable activity against a panel of microbes, including bacteria, fungi, and enveloped viruses. We have employed a maximum-likelihood approach to detect evidence of positive selection (adaptive evolution) in the evolution of these important molecules of the innate immune response. We have identified 14 amino acid sites that are predicted to be subject to positive selection. Furthermore, we show that all these sites are located in the mature antimicrobial peptide and not in the prepropeptide region of the molecule, implying that they are of functional importance. These results suggest that mammalian -defensins have been under selective pressure to evolve in response to potentially infectious challenges by fast-evolving microbes.
Key Words: Adaptive evolution • antimicrobial peptide • -defensin
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