Histatin

Histatins are proteins found in the saliva of some mammals. They inhibit bacterial proteases and promote wound healing of the oral mucosa. Your actual function but the structure is the outermost protein layer of enamel (English pellicle ). Histatins and Statherine to stabilize the calcium concentration of the saliva, belong to a family of similar proteins.

Classification

A distinction in humans up to 26 different histatins which consist predominantly of 20-40 amino acids. Twelve of them were systematically numbered as histatin 1, histatin -12. The most important are histatin -1, -3 and -5, which form a total of 85 to 90 percent of Gesamthistatinmenge.

The 12 histatins be HTN1 and HTN3 encoded by two genes and of the 57 or 51 amino acids long precursors using proteases cut:

10 20 30 40 50 MKFFVFALVL ALMISMISAD SHEKRHHGYR RKFHEKHHSH REFPFYGDYG SNYLYDN HTN1 gene                      D SHEKRHHGYR RKFHEKHHSH REFPFYGDYG SNYLYDN histatin -1                                   RKFHEKHHSH REFPFYGDYG SNYLYDN histatin -2          10 20 30 40 50 MKFFVFALIL ALMLSMTGAD SHAKRHHGYK RKFHEKHHSH RGYRSNYLYD N HTN3 gene                      D SHAKRHHGYK RKFHEKHHSH RGYRSNYLYD N histatin -3                                   RKFHEKHHSH RGYRSNYLYD N histatin -4                      D SHAKRHHGYK RKFHEKHHSH RGY histatin -5                      D SHAKRHHGYK RKFHEKHHSH RGYR histatin -6                                   RKFHEKHHSH RGY histatin 7                                    KFHEKHHSH RGY histatin 8                                   RKFHEKHHSH RGYR histatin -9                                    KFHEKHHSH RGYR histatin -10                           KRHHGYK R histatin -11                           KRHHGYK histatin -12 background

Histatins are cationic proteins that are rich in histidine. They inhibit bacterial proteases and have antimicrobial and fungistatic. Hence the recommendation to wet the own wounds with saliva, if nothing else is available.