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Lighting Up the Pathways to Caspase Activation Using Bimolecular Fluorescence Complementation
Published on: March 5, 2018
Cardiolipin-enriched raft-like microdomains are essential activating platforms for apoptotic signals on mitochondria
Maurizio Sorice1, Valeria Manganelli, Paola Matarrese
1Department of Experimental Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy. maurizio.sorice@uniroma1.it
Abstract:
Cardiolipin (CL) has recently been shown to provide an anchor and an essential activating platform for caspase-8 on mitochondria. We hypothesize that these platforms may correspond to "raft-like" microdomains, which have demonstrated to be detectable on mitochondrial membrane of cells undergoing apoptosis. The role for CL in "raft-like" microdomains could be to anchor caspase-8 at contact sites between inner and outer membranes, facilitating its self-activation, Bid cleavage and apoptosis execution. The role played by "raft-like" microdomains in the apoptotic program could introduce a new task in the pathogenetic studies on human diseases associated with cardiolipin dismetabolism.
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