Several nuclear events during apoptosis depend on caspase-3 activation but do not constitute a common pathway.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 19641621.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0006234 and PMC identifier 2713420.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
A number of nuclear events occur during apoptosis, including DNA laddering, nuclear lamina breakdown, phosphorylation of histones H2B and histone H2AX, and the tight binding to chromatin of HMGB1 and CAD, the nuclease responsible for DNA laddering. We have performed an epistasis analysis to investigate whether these events cluster together in pathways. We find that all depend directly or indirectly on caspase-3 activation. CAD activation, H2AX phosphorylation and DNA laddering cluster together into a pathway, but all other events appear to be independent of each other downstream of caspase-3, and likely evolved subject to different functional pressures.
Medical subject headings
- Apoptosis
- Caspase 3
- Cell Nucleus