Kumar S
Hanson Centre for Cancer Research, Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science, Adelaide, Australia.
FEBS Lett. 1995 Jul 10;368(1):69-72. doi: 10.1016/0014-5793(95)00602-6.
Nedd2 belongs to a family of mammalian cysteine proteases which share similarity with the Caenorhabditis elegans cell death protein, Ced-3. Overexpression of Nedd2 has been shown to induce apoptosis in mammalian cells but in the absence of a specific known inhibitor, it remains to be seen whether this represents cytotoxic effects of the Nedd2 protease or the specific activation of an apoptotic pathway. The present work shows that the factor-dependent cell line FDC-P1 expressing mouse antisense Nedd2 mRNA, exhibits significant inhibition of cell death upon removal of the cytokines, thus providing evidence for a direct role of Nedd2 in mediating apoptosis.
Nedd2属于哺乳动物半胱氨酸蛋白酶家族，与秀丽隐杆线虫细胞死亡蛋白Ced-3具有相似性。Nedd2的过表达已被证明可诱导哺乳动物细胞凋亡，但在缺乏特定已知抑制剂的情况下，这是否代表Nedd2蛋白酶的细胞毒性作用或凋亡途径的特异性激活仍有待观察。目前的研究表明，表达小鼠反义Nedd2 mRNA的因子依赖性细胞系FDC-P1在去除细胞因子后，细胞死亡受到显著抑制，从而为Nedd2在介导细胞凋亡中的直接作用提供了证据。
