Defensins are short cationic, amphiphilic, cysteine-rich peptides that constitute the front-line immune defense against various pathogens. In addition to exerting direct antibacterial activities, defensins inactivate several classes of unrelated bacterial exotoxins. To date, no coherent mechanism has been proposed to explain defensins' enigmatic efficiency toward various toxins. In this study, we showed that binding of neutrophil ?-defensin HNP1 to affected bacterial toxins caused their local unfolding, potentiated their thermal melting and precipitation, exposed new regions for proteolysis, and increased susceptibility to collisional quenchers without causing similar effects on tested mammalian structural and enzymatic proteins. Enteric ?-defensin HD5 and ?-defensin hBD2 shared similar toxin-unfolding effects with HNP1, albeit to different degrees. We propose that protein susceptibility to inactivation by defensins is contingent to their thermolability and conformational plasticity and that defensin-induced unfolding is a key element in the general mechanism of toxin inactivation by human defensins.
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