Department of Plant Biology & Pathology, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.
Trends Plant Sci. 2012 Aug;17(8):487-94. doi: 10.1016/j.tplants.2012.05.003. Epub 2012 Jun 2.
Research during the past two decades has revealed that specialized cysteine proteases act as conserved initiators or executioners for programmed cell death (PCD) in eukaryotes. Caspases were first identified as common regulators of PCD in metazoans, whereas the role of metacaspases (MCs) as regulators of cellular suicide in plants has only been shown genetically in the past several years. Together with recent biochemical and molecular characterizations of some of the representative MCs from different model systems, multiple mechanisms that can mediate the post-translational regulation of these proteases are beginning to emerge. Further elucidation of these regulatory pathways and definition of the downstream degradomes targeted by MCs should lead to a better understanding of cell death control in plants, protozoans, and fungi.
在过去的二十年中，研究揭示了特化的半胱氨酸蛋白酶作为真核生物程序性细胞死亡（PCD）的保守起始或执行者。半胱天冬酶最初被鉴定为后生动物 PCD 的常见调节剂，而在过去的几年中，才在遗传水平上证明了植物中作为细胞自杀调节剂的类半胱天冬酶（MCs）的作用。随着对不同模型系统中一些代表性 MC 的生化和分子特性的进一步研究，介导这些蛋白酶的翻译后调控的多种机制开始显现。这些调控途径的进一步阐明以及 MC 靶向的下游降解组的定义，应该有助于更好地理解植物、原生动物和真菌中的细胞死亡调控。
