... of cytosolic cytochrome c and caspase activity under basal conditions without inducing apoptosis. It also greatly enhanced etoposide-induced caspase activation and apoptosis, which is indicative of an enhanced cellular sensitivity to death signals. Taken together, our data unveil a previously unrecognized role...

...Han-Na Yoon; Sung-Yeon Yoon; Jin-Hyuck Hong; Nam-On Ku ABSTRACT Cytoskeletal keratin 18 (K18) undergoes caspase-mediated digestion during apoptosis, which leads to dramatic disassembly of keratin filaments. We studied the significance of K18 caspase digestion in a mouse model and generated...

...Hong Thi Tran; Mathias Fransen; Dionysia Dimitrakopoulou; Griet Van Imschoot; Nicolas Willemarck; Kris Vleminckx ABSTRACT Caspases constitute a family of cysteine proteases centrally involved in programmed cell death, which is an integral part of normal embryonic and fetal development. However...

... in cell death by activation of caspases and the induction of apoptosis. Here, we show that X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis (XIAP) plays a key role in the control of mitotic cell death. Ablation of XIAP expression sensitises cells to prolonged mitotic arrest caused by a microtubule poison. XIAP is stable...

... particle to the macrophage plasma membrane by a ‘bystander’ mechanism. This MAC-mediated bystander damage initiates NLRP3 inflammasome activation, resulting in caspase-1 activation and IL-1β and IL-18 secretion. Inflammasome activation is not induced when macrophages phagocytize unopsonized particles...

... or differentiated into neuronal cells. We found that microglia activated by lipopolysaccharide rapidly phagocytosed PC12 cells. Activated microglia caused reversible phosphatidylserine exposure on and reversible caspase activation in PC12 cells, and caspase inhibition prevented phosphatidylserine exposur...

... might be detrimental, directly causing apoptosis of cells or leading to a persistent damaging inflammatory response. NF-κB activity in stressed cells needs therefore to be controlled for homeostasis maintenance. In mildly stressed cells, caspase-3 cleaves p120 RasGAP, also known as RASA1, into an N...

...Matthew Brentnall; David B. Weir; Anthony Rongvaux; Adam I. Marcus; Lawrence H. Boise ABSTRACT Caspase-3 is an effector caspase that is activated downstream of mitochondrial outer-membrane permeabilization (MOMP) during apoptosis. However, previous work has demonstrated that caspase-3-deficient...

... detyrosinated microtubules in NIH3T3 cells and this function resulted from the activation of a RhoA-dependent microtubule stabilization pathway regulated by integrin signaling and the formin mDia1. Induction of microtubule stability by Aβ was also initiated by dimerization of APP and required caspase activity...

... (MOMP) leading to caspase-3 activation. Additionally, previous studies have implicated lysosomal membrane permeability (LMP) and formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) as early steps of TNFα-induced apoptosis. However, how these two events connect to MOMP and caspase-3 activation has been largely...

... of drug addition is a deterministic decision. Fluorescence microscopy Protease Caspase Lineage Epigenetics Apoptosis is a form of cell death that eliminates unwanted or harmful cells ( Ellis et al., 1991 ). It is characterized by the activation of caspases ( Salvesen and Dixit, 1997 ; Yuan...

... to Fas-related signals, the ubiquitously expressed p21-activated kinase 2 (Pak2) can be activated via cleavage by caspases to release a constitutively active C-terminal fragment, which mediates cell death. Our data show that huntingtin interacts with Pak2. Overexpression of huntingtin significantly...

..., Bcl-2 could not directly associate with the caspase-activating adaptor protein CED-4, nor could it inhibit CED-4-dependent yeast death. By contrast, Bcl-2 could bind the C. elegans pro-apoptotic BH3-only Bcl-2 family member EGL-1. These data prompt us to hypothesise that Bcl-2 might suppress nematode...

...Sally Kornbluth; Kristin White Studies in a wide variety of organisms have produced a general model for the induction of apoptosis in which multiple signaling pathways lead ultimately to activation of the caspase family of proteases. Once activated, these enzymes cleave key cellular substrates...

... caspase inhibitor zVAD-fmk, the caspase-8 inhibitor zIETD-fmk and by CrmA, a viral inhibitor of caspase-1 and caspase-8. This suggests an involvement of caspase-8 in TNFR2-mediated apoptosis. The upstream adaptor of caspase-8, FADD, is also involved in TNFR2-induced cell death, since transient...

...) or inhibit (p38β) apoptosis are both suppressed by PD169316, we investigated their regulatory involvement in Fas-signaling. We report here, that p38α, but not p38β, exerts its proapoptotic effect by inhibiting the phosphorylation and presence of c-FLIP S , but not c-FLIP L , in the DISC to promote caspase-8...

...Alessandra Marconi; Paola Atzei; Cristina Panza; Chiara Fila; Rossana Tiberio; Francesca Truzzi; Tina Wachter; Martin Leverkus; Carlo Pincelli β 1 -integrin protects keratinocyte stem cells (KSC) from cell-detachment apoptosis (`anoikis'). Here we show that caspase-8 active protein is detected...

...Israel Muro; Kristin Monser; Rollie J. Clem Proteolytic processing is required for the activation of most caspases. However, recent reports have suggested that the activation of the mammalian initiator caspase caspase-9 occurs during dimerization rather than after processing. Previously, we...

... The Company of Biologists Limited 2004 2004 Apoptosis Caspase eIF4G Localisation Translation initiation During the initiation phase of eukaryotic protein synthesis, the ribosome is recruited to the 5′ untranslated region (5′ UTR) of the mRNA. Several eukaryotic initiation factors (eIFs...

... of apoptosis in epithelial cells, tight junction proteins undergo proteolytic cleavage in a distinctive manner correlated with a disruption of tight junctions. The transmembrane protein occludin and, likewise, the cytoplasmic adaptor proteins ZO-1 and ZO-2 are fragmented by caspase cleavage. In addition...