MBE Advance Access published online on February 12, 2004
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msh084
Molecular Biology and Evolution © Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution 2004; all rights reserved
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1 Education and Research Centre, St. Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin 4, Ireland; Department of Medicine, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: cliona.ofarrelly{at}ucd.ie.
Key Words:
Adaptive evolution, antimicrobial peptide,
© 2004 Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution
Original Articles
Evidence of Positively Selected Sites in Mammalian
-Defensins
2 Education and Research Centre, St. Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin 4, Ireland; Department of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland
3 Biology Department, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland
4 Education and Research Centre, St. Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin 4, Ireland; Conway Institute, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
Abstract 
-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 prepro-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.-defensin
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