Phytaspase, a relocalisable cell death promoting plant protease with caspase specificity.

ABSTRACT: Caspases are cysteine-dependent proteases and are important components of animal apoptosis. They introduce specific breaks after aspartate residues in a number of cellular proteins mediating programmed cell death (PCD). Plants encode only distant homologues of caspases, the metacaspases that are involved in PCD, but do not possess caspase-specific proteolytic activity. Nevertheless, plants do display caspase-like activities indicating that enzymes structurally distinct from classical caspases may operate as caspase-like proteases. Here, we report the identification and characterisation of a novel PCD-related subtilisin-like protease from tobacco and rice named phytaspase (plant aspartate-specific protease) that possesses caspase specificity distinct from that of other known caspase-like pr

SUBMITTER: Chichkova NV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2845272 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature