The objective of this study was to investigate the protease family caspases in skeletal muscle and their potential contribution to postmortem proteolysis and meat tenderization. Ten Large White gilts were slaughtered, and samples of LM were taken at 0, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 192 h after slaughter and immediately snap frozen in liquid nitrogen. Samples were subsequently analyzed for caspase 3/7 an...

Metnase (SETMAR) is a SET and transposase fusion protein that promotes in vivo end joining activity and mediates genomic integration of foreign DNA. Recent studies showed that Metnase retained most of the transposase activities, including 5'-terminal inverted repeat (TIR)-specific binding and assembly of a paired end complex, and cleavage of the 5'-end of the TIR element. Here we show that R432...

The relationship between focal adhesion protein (FAK) activity and loss of cell-matrix contact during apoptosis is not entirely clear nor has the role of FAK in chemically induced apoptosis been studied. We investigated the status of FAK phosphorylation and cleavage in renal epithelial cells during apoptosis caused by the nephrotoxicant dichlorovinylcysteine (DCVC). DCVC treatment caused a loss...

The TAR DNA-binding protein-43 (TDP-43) has been identified as a major constituent of inclusions found in frontotemporal dementia with ubiquitin-positive inclusions (FTLD-U) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). To determine a possible role for TDP-43 in Alzheimer's disease (AD), a site-directed caspase-cleavage antibody to TDP-43 based upon a known caspase-3 cleavage consensus site within T...

Virus-induced apoptosis of infected cells can limit both the time and the cellular machinery available for virus replication. Hence, many viruses have evolved strategies to specifically inhibit apoptosis. However, Aleutian mink disease parvovirus (ADV) is the first example of a DNA virus that not only induces apoptosis but also utilizes caspase activity to facilitate virus replication. To deter...

According to dogma, initiator caspases are activated through proximity-induced homodimerization, but some studies infer that during apoptosis caspase-9 may instead form a holoenzyme with the Apaf-1 apoptosome. Using several biochemical approaches, including a novel site-specific crosslinking technique, we provide the first direct evidence that procaspase-9 homodimerizes within the apoptosome, m...

Triglyceride (TG) accumulation causes macrophage cell death, which affects the development of atherosclerosis. Here, we examined whether caspase-2 is implicated in TG-induced macrophage cell death. We found that caspase-2 activity is increased in TG-treated THP-1 macrophages, and that inhibition of caspase-2 activity drastically inhibits TG-induced cell death. We previously reported that TG-ind...

BACKGROUND Prostate apoptosis response-4 (Par-4) is a tumor-suppressor protein that selectively activates and induces apoptosis in cancer cells, but not in normal cells. The cancer specific pro-apoptotic function of Par-4 is encoded in its centrally located SAC (Selective for Apoptosis induction in Cancer cells) domain (amino acids 137-195). The SAC domain itself is capable of nuclear entry, ca...

Intracellular neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) are the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease and other tauopathies in which tau, a microtubule-associated protein, loses its ability to stabilize microtubules. Several post-translational modifications including phosphorylation and truncation increase tau's propensity to aggregate thus forming NFTs; however, the mechanisms underlying tau conformational cha...