Characterization of goat lingual antimicrobial peptide cDNA

Defensins form a crucial component of innate immune system, making it an effective first line of defense in animals. In the present study, goat lingual antimicrobial peptide (LAP) cDNA has been characterized which has an open reading frame of 249 bp starting from 14–262 bp and similarity of 99.5%, 94.9%, 94.4%, 90.8%, 87.2%, and 85.6% with the reported Goat BD1, Goat EBD, Goat BD2, Buffalo EBD, Cattle LAP and Cattle TAP sequences respectively at nucleotide level. At amino acid level, it showed a homology of 98.5%, 87.7%, 72.3%, and 70.8% with the reported Goat BD1, Goat EBD, and Cattle LAP and Cattle TAP amino acid sequences respectively. The goat LAP sequence showed 22 nucleotide and 17 amino acid substitutions with cattle LAP. The amino acid comparison with cattle LAP and buffalo LAP showed 16 and 14 amino acid substitutions. The encoded goat LAP consisted of 82 deduced amino acids of which 19 are strongly basic, 23 hydrophobic and 22 polar amino acids. Phylogenetically, goat LAP is more evolutionarily related to the goat BD1 than cattle LAP.