Undoubtedly, caspases are the major driving force for apoptosis execution and mechanisms of their activation and inhibition have been largely unveiled. Recent progress has been made with regard to the exact intracellular ordering of caspases, monitoring their activities in vivo and unveiling their substrate degradomes. Moreover, non-caspase proteases seem to assist caspases in the completion of...

In this issue of Cancer Cell, Schimmer et al. report the identification of small molecule antagonists of XIAP that overcome its inhibition of caspase-3. It was remarkable that the compounds directly induced cell death in tumor cells while having little toxicity on normal cells. This suggests that caspases are already activated in tumor cells, which is different from the caspase activation statu...

The cysteine proteases known as caspases play a central role in most apoptotic pathways. Here, we show that caspase inhibitors arrest the maturation of human erythroid progenitors at early stages of differentiation, before nucleus and chromatin condensation. Effector caspases such as caspase-3 are transiently activated through the mitochondrial pathway during erythroblast differentiation and cl...

Increase in intracellular superoxide anion level has been found to inhibit Fas-mediated apoptosis. However, not much has been studied on the relationship between intracellular superoxide and caspases. In response to incubation with TNF ligand over a period of time, caspases-2, -3, -8, and -9 activities of M14TF cells showed increasing caspase activity, meaning apoptosis was triggered. However, ...

The extent of conservation in the programmed cell death pathways that are activated in species belonging to different kingdoms is not clear. Caspases are key components of animal apoptosis; caspase activities are detected in both animal and plant cells. Yet, while animals have caspase genes, plants do not have orthologous sequences in their genomes. It is 10 years since the first caspase activi...

Caspase-3 is a cysteine protease located in both the cytoplasm and mitochondrial intermembrane space that is a central effector of many apoptotic pathways. In resting cells, a subset of caspase-3 zymogens is S-nitrosylated at the active site cysteine, inhibiting enzyme activity. During Fas-induced apoptosis, caspases are denitrosylated, allowing the catalytic site to function. In the current st...

Apoptosis is a major form of cell death, characterized initially by a series of stereotypic morphological changes. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, the gene ced-3 encodes a protein required for developmental cell death. Since the recognition that CED-3 has sequence identity with the mammalian cysteine protease interleukin-1 beta-converting enzyme (ICE), a family of at least 10 related cy...

During development, epithelial cells need a little help fi guring out which way is up. Jaffe et al. show how a polarizing protein ensures that the cells face the right direction. A newborn epithelial cell in, say, the intestinal lining will polarize so that its apical surface is oriented toward the gut lumen. The protein Cdc42 helps set up polarity in a range of organisms and cell types, and pr...

Objective: Liver cancer is one of the most common causes death, with reduced survival rates. The development new chemotherapeutic agents essential to find effective cytotoxic drugs that give minimum side effects surrounding healthy tissues. main objective present study was evaluate and mechanism cell death induced by crude diethyl ether extract Xylocarpus mouccensis on human hepatocellular carc...

The fluctuations of dissolved oxygen (DO) often lead to hypoxia in aquaculture, which has a huge adverse impact on fish. This study mainly investigated the effects long-term oxidative stress, immune response, and cell apoptosis liver golden pompano ( Trachinotus blochii ), is not tolerant hypoxia. So we conducted 14 day low stress experiment with DO 3.0 ± 0.2 mg/L, then restore normal levels co...