Figure 3

Comparison of ovodefensins, avian beta-defensins from chicken and chicken ovotransferrin. A) CLUSTALW 2.0.11 multiple sequence alignment of ovodefensins (top), avian beta-defensins (middle) and the ovotransferrin sequence (bottom) used by Odani [2]. The shading shows greater than 85% identity and features the conserved cysteines and the glycine at position 10 of the ovodefensin peptides. Complete conservation between all molecules is indicated with '*' and weakly similar with '.'. The black bars at the top of the diagram indicate the known cysteine bonds in avian beta-defensins and ovodefensins. The avian beta-defensins nomenclature follows that suggested in [6]. A mouse defensin, mouse beta-defensin 7, NP_631966 (Def7), was included to indicate the relationship between avian beta-defensins, mammalian defensins and ovodefensins. Where the Latin name has been used as the basis for the peptide name the common name for the species can be found in Figure 2C adjacent to the peptide names. B) The evolutionary history was inferred from the alignment in A using the Neighbor-Joining method as detailed in figure 2 with the exception the complete deletion option was used.