Abstract Interleukin 1β‐converting enzyme (ICE)‐like proteases (caspases) play an important role in programmed cell death (apoptosis), and elucidating the consequences of their proteolytic activity is central to our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of cell death. Diverse structural and regulatory proteins and enzymes, including protein kinase Cδ, the retinoblastoma protein (a protein involved in cell survival), the DNA repair enzyme DNA‐dependent protein kinase and the nuclear lamins, undergo specific and limited endoproteolytic cleavage by various caspases during apoptosis. Since individual caspases can cleave multiple substrates, the consequences of cleavage of only a single substrate are still poorly understood. Nevertheless, proteolytic activation of protein kinase Cδ may be an important early step in the cell death pathway, and cleavage of the retinoblastoma protein could suppress its cell survival function, whereas proteolytic inactivation of DNA repair enzymes might compromise the ability of the cell to reverse DNA fragmentation. On the other hand, cleavages of nuclear and cytoplasmic structural proteins (e.g. the lamins and Gas2) appear to be required for or contribute to the dramatic rearrangements in cellular architecture that are necessary for the completion of the cell death process. An emerging theme is that parallel and sequential proteolytic activation and inactivation of key protein substrates occurs during the multiple steps of apoptosis.
Expression of the adenovirus E1A oncogene stimulates both cell proliferation and p53-dependent apoptosis in rodent cells. p53 implements apoptosis in all or in part through tran...
Initiation of apopotosis requires the conversion of procaspases to mature caspases. Here we show that oligomerization of pro-caspases is sufficient to induce proteolytic generat...
▪ Abstract Apoptosis is a genetically programmed, morphologically distinct form of cell death that can be triggered by a variety of physiological and pathological stimuli. Studi...
The caspase family of proteases plays a critical role in the execution of apoptosis. However, efforts to decipher the molecular mechanisms by which caspases induce cell death ha...
REVIEW Apoptosis, an evolutionarily conserved form of cell suicide, requires specialized machinery. The central component of this machinery is a proteolytic system involving a f...
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