Death by design: mechanism and control of apoptosis.
Active cellular suicide by apoptosis plays important roles in animal development, tissue homeostasis and a wide variety of diseases, including cancer, AIDS, stroke and many neurodegenerative disorders. A central step in the execution of apoptosis is the activation of an unusual class of cysteine proteases, termed caspases, that are widely expressed as inactive zymogens. Originally, the mechanisms for regulating the caspase-based cell death programme seemed to be different in Caenorhabditis elegans, mammals and insects. However, recent results suggest that these apparent differences in the control of cell death reflect our incomplete knowledge, rather than genuine mechanistic differences between different organisms.
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Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Dept of Biology and Dept of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 68-430, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. zhiwei@wccf.mit.edu
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D000818:Animals; D017209:Apoptosis; D020169:Caspases / Q000378:metabolism; D004330:Drosophila; D029721:Drosophila Proteins; D004789:Enzyme Activation; D006801:Humans; D051034:Inhibitor of Apoptosis Proteins; D009479:Neuropeptides / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology; D010455:Peptides / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology; D011506:Proteins / Q000502:physiology; D019253:Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-bcl-2 / Q000378:metabolism; D011956:Receptors, Cell Surface / Q000378:metabolism
D029721:Drosophila Proteins; C108880:HID protein, Drosophila; D051034:Inhibitor of Apoptosis Proteins; D009479:Neuropeptides; D010455:Peptides; D011506:Proteins; D019253:Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-bcl-2; D011956:Receptors, Cell Surface; C108881:grim protein, Drosophila; C086973:rpr protein, Drosophila; D020169:Caspases