 Human host defense antimicrobial peptides and proteins, amps, play a critical role in warding off invading microbial pathogens. Additionally, amps can possess other biological functions such as apoptosis, wound healing, and immune modulation. This article provides an overview on the identification, activity, 3D structure, and mechanism of action of human amps selected from the antimicrobial peptide database. Over 100 such peptides have been identified from a variety of tissues and epithelial surfaces, including skin, eyes, ears, mouths, gut, immune, nervous, and urinary systems. These peptides vary from 10 to 150 amino acids with a net charge between minus 3 and plus 20 and a hydrophobic content below 60%. The sequence diversity enables human amps to adopt various 3D structures and to attack pathogens by different mechanisms. While alpha defense in HD6 can self-assemble on the bacterial surface into nanonets to entangle bacteria, both HNP1 and beta def. This article was authored by Guangxuan Wang. We are article.tv, links in the description below.