Malaria Research Unit, University Lyon 1, 8 Avenue Rockefeller, 69373 Lyon cedex 08, France.
Parasit Vectors. 2011 Feb 28;4:26. doi: 10.1186/1756-3305-4-26.
Mechanisms concerning life or death decisions in protozoan parasites are still imperfectly understood. Comparison with higher eukaryotes has led to the hypothesis that caspase-like enzymes could be involved in death pathways. This hypothesis was reinforced by the description of caspase-related sequences in the genome of several parasites, including Plasmodium, Trypanosoma and Leishmania. Although several teams are working to decipher the exact role of metacaspases in protozoan parasites, partial, conflicting or negative results have been obtained with respect to the relationship between protozoan metacaspases and cell death. The aim of this paper is to review current knowledge of protozoan parasite metacaspases within a drug targeting perspective.
关于原生动物寄生虫生死决策的机制仍不完全清楚。与高等真核生物的比较导致了半胱氨酸蛋白酶样酶可能参与死亡途径的假说。这一假说得到了几种寄生虫基因组中与半胱氨酸蛋白酶相关序列描述的支持，包括疟原虫、锥虫和利什曼原虫。尽管有几个研究小组正在努力阐明原生动物半胱氨酸蛋白酶在原生动物寄生虫中的确切作用，但关于原生动物半胱氨酸蛋白酶与细胞死亡之间的关系，得到的结果是部分的、相互矛盾的或负面的。本文的目的是从药物靶点的角度综述原生动物寄生虫半胱氨酸蛋白酶的现有知识。
