Defensins Knowledgebase

Scientists have a knack for creating self-explanatory names for things, and the defensins are no exception. It doesn’t take an immunologist to guess that this family of peptides does something to protect us, and indeed they do. Defensins are antimicrobial peptides that are found in a wide variety of organ-isms (including us), and now, thanks to the collaborative efforts of the Bioinformatics Institute of Singapore and the Singapore Eye Research Institute, there is an online database dedicated to these brave warriors. The introduction page provides clear instructions on how to search the database, and the site also provides links to defensin literature and news stories. My only complaint about the site is its cumbersome layout—I’ve never been much of a fan of the scrolling-page-within-scrolling-page website design.

Visit the site defensins.bii.a-star.edu.sg