Defensins are cysteine-rich cationic polypeptides that are important in the host immunologic response to invading microorganisms. This antimicrobial protein is secreted and is a member of the beta defensin protein family. Beta defensin genes are found in several clusters throughout the genome, with this gene mapping to a cluster at 20q11.1. Two transcript variants, one protein-coding and the other not, have been found for this gene. [provided by RefSeq, Nov 2014].