Significant caspase-8 activity has been found in normal and certain tumor cells, suggesting that caspase-8 possesses an alternative, nonapoptotic function that may contribute to tumor progression. In this article, we report that caspase-8 promotes cell motility. In particular, caspase-8 is required for the optimal activation of calpains, Rac, and lamellipodial assembly. This represents a novel ...

The mechanisms by which infections induce diaphragm dysfunction remain poorly understood. The purpose of this study was to determine which caspase pathways (i.e., the extrinsic, death receptor-linked caspase-8 pathway, and/or the intrinsic, mitochondrial-related caspase-9 pathway) are responsible for endotoxin-induced diaphragm contractile dysfunction. We determined 1) whether endotoxin adminis...

During programmed cell death (PCD) apoptosis is controlled by many factors such as proteases. With no specific protease (s) known during PCD in the developing nervous system so far, we sought to determine if any specific protease (s) is involved in this process and therefore used different protease inhibitors during PCD (from embryonic day 6 to 10) in chick embryos. Among the inhibitors commerc...

Review on CASP8, with data on DNA/RNA, on the protein encoded and where the gene is implicated.

We show here that caspase-8 is required for the death of primary rat neurons induced by an expanded polyglutamine repeat (Q79). Expression of Q79 recruited and activated caspase-8. Inhibition of caspase-8 blocked polyglutamine-induced cell death. Coexpression of Q79 with the caspase inhibitor CrmA, a dominant-negative mutant of FADD (FADD DN), Bcl-2, or Bcl-xL, but not an N-terminally tagged Bc...

EphA7 has been implicated in the regulation of apoptotic cell death in neural epithelial cells. In this report, we provide evidence that EphA7 interacts with caspase-8 to induce apoptotic cell signaling. First, a pull-down assay using biotinylated ephrinA5-Fc showed that EphA7 coprecipitated with wild type caspase-8 or catalytically inactive caspase-8 mutant. Second, co-transfection of EphA7 wi...