Diversity and antimicrobial activity relationship of Japanese quail cathelicidin.

The Japanese quail has several advantages as a low-fat meat bird with high immunity against diseases. Cathelicidins (CATHs) are host defense peptides with conservation across a vertebrate species and play an important role in innate immunity. Furthermore, the funcrion of host defense peptides are altered by amino acid substitutions. Then, we studied the diversity of cathelicidin genes in avian and detected SNPs in all CATH genes.