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Apoptosis

Caspases find a new place to hide

Nature volume 403, pages 29–30 (2000)Cite this article

The philosophical muse proclaiming that “death is the essential condition of life”1 has a firm footing in biology, for programmed cell death (apoptosis) is obligatory for normal development of multicellular organisms2. But apoptosis is a double-edged sword, and deregulated cell death is implicated in a growing number of clinical disorders3. So, the apoptotic process needs to be tightly regulated. One way in which this is done is by physically segregating the different components of the apoptotic machinery — only when the death switch is tripped are the tools of execution brought together in the cytosol and the suicide programme activated.

The two main compartments known to be involved in such segregation are the plasma membrane, where both death and survival receptors reside, and the mitochondrion, which is home to several proteins that regulate apoptosis. Now, reporting on page 98 of this issue, Yuan and colleagues4 point to the endoplasmic reticulum as a third subcellular compartment implicated in apoptotic execution. Furthermore, they provide evidence linking activation of a hitherto obscure apoptotic enzyme, caspase-12, to Alzheimer's disease.

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Figure 1: Three distinct apoptotic signalling pathways.

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  1. the Division of Paediatrics, Weston Laboratory, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, Hammersmith Hospital, Du Cane Road, London, W12 0NN, UK

    Huseyin Mehmet

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  1. Huseyin Mehmet
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Correspondence to Huseyin Mehmet.

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Mehmet, H. Caspases find a new place to hide. Nature 403, 29–30 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/47377

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