A preliminary analysis of the goat lactoferrin encoding gene

Abstract

Lactoferrin (Lf) is a glycoprotein with a molecular weight of ~80 kDa. It has been isolated from milk and identified in various different mammalian secretions. Several physiological functions have been ascribed to Lf, including regulation of cellular growth and differentiation (Iyer and Lonnerdal, 1993), intestinal iron homeostasis (Levay and Viljoen, 1995), host defense against microbial infection and inflammation (Baveye et al. 1999), regulation of myelopoiesis (Brock, 2002) and protection against cancer (Ward et al. 2002).